


Candyfloss and Lace

by bzarcher



Series: Overwatch Cryptid AU [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Attempted Coercion, Attempted Kidnapping, Blood, Bogeymen, Cryptids, Drug assisted interrogation, Epilogue, F/F, F/M, Fighting, Gen, Ghoul, Gunshots, Kidnapping, Kumiho, M/M, Minor Character Death, Modern (ish) AU, Multi, Nightclub, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Oreads - Freeform, Other, Other relationships and characters to be added, Past Relationship(s), Pharmercy, Podfic Welcome, Prisoners, Racism, Sasquach, Singing, Sirens, Speciesism, Tags updated as chapters are added, Tanuki, Temporary Character Death, Timeskip, Trauma, Trust, Vampire Tracer, Vampire Widowmaker, Vampires, Were-Creatures, Widowtracer, Yowie, bartending, canon character death, chupacabra, cryptid AU, discussion of abusive relationships, friendships, gunshot wound, vampires exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-08-28 04:41:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 54,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8432236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bzarcher/pseuds/bzarcher
Summary: In a world where humans and Cryptids live (more or less) side by side, most patrons assume that the tall, pale, elaborately dressed bartender at Club L'Enfer is a vampire.They're wrong, but Amélie makes great tips by playing to the tropes. Still, she'd love to know what's going on with the pink haired raver who picks up a different girl every weekend...





	1. Mistaken Identity

Everyone assumed Amélie Lacroix was a vampire. She had the look, after all. Tall, cool, pale. That devastating French accent and perfect air of ennui as she tended the bar at Club L’Enfer, always dressed in stunningly elaborate Gothic style.

They were wrong.

The Midtown dance club certainly had its share of cryptid employees and guests, but Amélie Lacroix was as baseline a human as one might find. She’d been dressing in Goth since she was a teenager because she liked the style, nothing more.

Still, cultivating a certain air certainly helped her tips, so she played up her role to the hilt.

It was considered a bit unusual for a human to work in a club known to attract a fair bit of Manhattan’s nonhuman population, but Amélie had never considered herself an entirely usual woman. Besides, she liked to joke that compared to the culture shock she’d experienced when moving from her family’s sleepy home near Annecy to New York City, working bar with a bunch of non-human coworkers was nothing.

“Heads up,” Hana called as she came in to grab a tray of drinks, her braided bundle of tails swishing beneath her Lolita-style skirts, “Candy Machine just walked in.”

The bubblegum-pink-haired raver had just reached the dance floor when Hana pointed her out with a slight flick of her head. ‘Candy Machine’ was a regular to the club, but Amélie had never spoken to her in all the time she’d worked there. She’d learned quickly that the rather distinctive patron didn’t come to L’Enfer to drink.

Short, athletic, and full of seemingly boundless energy, she danced the night away in tights, cutoff shorts, and a leather jacket over colorful t-shirts, eventually drawing a partner away from the herd of revelers and leaving with them near closing time. She’d earned her nickname (coined by Hana, naturally) when the staff had realized that the woman never picked up the same person twice, always selecting a new target and moving in for the kill with an almost clockwork precision. Every weekend, without fail, for the past three years.

“Hm.” Amélie wouldn’t dare tell the Korean fox-woman how interested she’d become in the woman’s strange routine. Hana’s natural instinct for mischief was not something to encourage, as it often lead to unintended consequences. Realizing she’d been watching that thatch of pink hair bounce and bob across the dance floor for just a moment too long, Amélie quickly redirected the conversation towards a game she knew Hana wouldn’t be able to resist. “Who do you think she'll be after tonight?"

“Redhead,” Hana stated confidently, laying a $20 on the bar top, “she picked up a brunette last weekend.”

“True. But I suspect she’s in the mood for a blonde. It’s been a while.” Her own $20 joined it on the bar, and the two women shook on it before slipping both bills into an envelope. “Ask Athena and Aleks for their wagers when you make the rounds, and text me.”

Hana grinned, tucking the envelope down the front of her apron. “You’re on!”

In the end, the mysterious girl had settled on a pretty young blonde in a blue mini-dress and grey tights, leaving Hana sulking and Amélie with a nice boost to her tips for the evening.

* * *

The following weekend, Amélie wagered this would be the week the girl settled on a redhead, while Hana had bet on black hair. She’d been disappointed to note that the raver seemed to be narrowing her focus to a young Asian woman with long raven tresses in elaborate braids when her night suddenly became much worse.

“ _Bonsoir, mon petit rossignol_.”

Amélie tensed at the sound of a Frenchman’s voice from behind her as she’d been pulling down a fresh bottle of Stoli for the bar. Taking a moment to school her expression back into her usual cool mask, she turned slowly to face the sandy-haired man now sitting at the bar, her voice laden with frost. “I am not your _anything_ , Gérard. That is what it means when you sign the divorce papers.”

Gérard gave a dismissive wave, his mouth twisting into a smirk. “Yet you still wear my ring, Amé.” The smugness in his voice made a wave of disgust rise from her stomach, and it took an effort of will to resist the urge to yank the ring off and fling it at him in response.

“Because it wards off a certain type of customer. _Like you_.”

It had been one thing to discover the traveling architect had a mistress in L.A. Such things happened, and she was more upset that he’d lied so clumsily about it. It had been quite another when he’d flown into a possessive rage when she’d half-joked that she might do the same someday to even the scales.

“You don't have to be that way, _ma petite chou_. I’m a changed man!”

“I’m sure.” Amélie’s deadpan dismissal should have been the end of their discussion as she turned away – and if he’d truly been a ‘changed man’, it would have been.

Instead, he’d reached out to seize her wrist, a dangerous glint in his eyes. “I can prove it. Come home with me tonight, Amé.”

She'd been about to demand he let her go before she had him thrown out, when the pink haired woman interrupted their tableaux, speaking in a high, clear voice with a Cockney accent. “’Scuse me, guv.” Half inserting herself, half body checking the larger man backwards in her apparent haste to reach the bar, her elbow connected with the his chest just hard enough to make him release his grip, but not so hard as to appear deliberate. “Could I get a Black Velvet and a Bela Lugosi’s Dead, please?”

Amélie flicked a grateful look towards the girl from beneath her eyelashes, then nodded as she turned to prepare the order. “Of course. One moment.” Then, turning just enough to meet Gérard’s shocked gaze, she lifted her chin. “You are not welcome here. Leave, or I will have you removed _. C’est clair_?”

The way his scowling face darkened with anger made it clear her ex-husband didn’t think the matter was truly over, but he did turn and walk away from the bar, grumpily shoving his way back through the crowd as he made his way to the club’s exit.

She finished mixing both drinks, then delivered them to the raver girl, who had turned to scan the crowd as she leaned against the bar. At first Amélie thought she’d been trying to find her earlier dance partner in the crowd again, but after a moment she realized the girl’s gaze was following Gérard to make sure he was truly leaving.

“ _Merci_ ,” she murmured as she set the drinks down, “consider these on the house.”

“Well, that’s convenient,” the raver quipped as she turned back to the bar, “because I was going to tell you to keep your pick and leave me the other.”

“Ah.” She couldn’t help but smile at the gallant move, taking the house cocktail rather than the pint glass of champagne and Guinness. Bubbles always went straight to her head, and the fruity drink would be easier to nurse along until close. Technically she shouldn’t have accepted at all, but a few sips would help settle her still somewhat frazzled nerves. “I’m Amélie.”

“Lena,” the smaller woman grinned, “Lena Oxton.”

Before they could get much further, a statuesque woman with dark olive skin and long, wavy hair strode to the bar, her face pinched with embarrassment. “Amélie, I am so sorry. One of the new bouncers was on the door and he didn’t know.”

She shrugged, trying to ease the Greek woman’s mind. “It’s all right, Athena. He’s gone now, and he has no idea where I live these days. He probably came here because he knew it was the only place he’d be able to find me.”

“I’m going to be speaking with Winston about having him officially blacklisted” the manager insisted, “and I’ll make it clear to all staff that he’s not welcome here. Do I understand correctly that he grabbed you?”

Amélie looked away, busying herself with the barware. “Just my wrist. It wasn’t serious – as I said, he’s gone. It was dealt with, and he didn’t cause any harm.”

“That’s battery. You could press charges.” Athena’s dark eyes narrowed, and the oread’s skin took on a faint sheen as her anger instinctively caused her flesh to transform into living stone.

“Of course I could.” Amélie sighed, letting her mask slip slightly as she bent under her fatigue at having to deal with this shit _again_. “But tying me up in a court battle where I’d be forced to see him regularly would still be a victory in his mind, and Gérard is smart enough to get a good lawyer. I looked into a restraining order, before. He made it clear that if I went forward, he would challenge every single line. This would be no different.”

Athena sighed, her body slowly reverting back to muscle and bone as her rage cooled. “I see your point. But if he shows up again, I’m breaking his damn arm. Assuming Aleks doesn’t eat him.”

Amélie smiled. “There’s a thought. But I will be fine. Thank you.”

Athena nodded slowly, her eyes still dark with anger, then turned and headed past the bar for the stairway that lead to the back office, where the massive Sasquatch who owned the club would be working at this time of night.

“ _Et merde_ ,” Amélie grumbled, turning to where Lena was still sitting, her fingers tracing a slow circle around the rim of her pint glass, “I apologize for all of that. My ex-husband is a piece of shit.”

“Aren’t they all?” Lena smiled sympathetically, taking a small sip of her drink. “No worries. You got far to go tonight?”

Amélie shrugged. “My flat is off the N line – in Brooklyn. The station is a short walk.”

“Make you a better offer? How about a ride home.” Lena pulled the dark tinted goggles she’d been wearing as part of her club gear up onto her forehead, revealing eyes the color of dark honey. “I’d feel better if you didn't try to walk home alone tonight, and I’d bet your friends would too.”

“That's really not…”

“It’s no trouble,” Lena gently interrupted, “I’m going that way myself.”

Amélie sighed. Despite her reputation, Lena seemed to genuinely mean well. Besides – she did have a point about going alone. “All right, if you insist.”

“Glad to hear it,” the Brit smiled, pulling her goggles back down, “I’m going to see if I can grab a couple more dances before chucking-out time – but I’ll be back at last call, yeah?”

“That would be fine,” Amélie agreed, “I’ll just need to get my purse from my locker after I close out.”

“Cheers!”

* * *

Amélie headed upstairs to grab her purse and coat as quickly as she could after tipping out, doing her best to avoid talking to any of her other coworkers. She had no interest in having to go over the events of Gérard’s boorish attempt to put a claim on her again. She just wanted to go home and sleep. If she was lucky, maybe the _fils de pute_ would do everyone a favor and get hit by a bus.

She’d quietly told Athena she would be getting a ride home after balancing her register drawer, and had been told to skip cleaning and just head out. Athena promised that she would see to the rest of her closing duties personally. “Just be careful, Amélie. Please.”

“I promise – if there’s an issue, I will have my phone, and I have pepper spray in my purse.”

“Good enough. Safe travels home.”

* * *

**FROM:** THE GLORIOUS D.VA

 **TO:** Bear-Girl, Rock-Chick, Elvira

 **SUBJ:** CANDY MACHINE WENT HOME WITH AMÉLIE.

Do I win because she’s got black hair, or do we call a mulligan because it was one of us? Is this considered throwing the bet? I left the envelope in the tip drawer because we must DISCUSS this. But I still think I won.

Also: YOU HAD BETTER GIVE US DETAILS.

-Hana

* * *

Amélie had been surprised by how friendly Lena was – she supposed that was part of the woman’s talents. How else could she constantly be so successful on the pull? Though, given how charming the Brit had turned out to be (not to mention having legs like _that_ ), why did she _need_ to be?

She’d kept the conversation light as they’d driven over the bridge, avoiding the subject of what had happened, while Amélie did her best to resist asking why the girl had such a strangely rigorous routine.

When they’d finally reached her apartment building, Amélie wasn’t sure why she invited Lena up for a glass of wine. Maybe she’d just wanted to avoid drinking alone after such an unexpectedly stressful evening.

Maybe some morbidly curious part of her just wanted to know what the _fuss_ with this girl was.

Regardless of her reasons, Lena had accepted happily enough, following her up the stairs and complimenting the décor in her small one bedroom flat, which Amélie appreciated. It was nothing like the large Park Avenue apartment she’d moved into after she’d married Gérard, but this was _hers_ , and she was quietly proud of that, even if the oven was ridiculously tiny and the building’s heating was shit.

Somehow she wasn’t surprised that they didn’t even pretend to open the wine.

It started well enough. Lena was a quite talented kisser. Her lip gloss lent her a slightly cool sweetness as their tongues danced and the shorter woman’s playful dress and bubbly attitude carried over to her approach to the bedroom, laughing softly as she fumbled with the fittings of Amélie’s coat and the pins that held the lace ascot at her throat.

For her part, Amélie was surprised at how soft and dry Lena’s skin was after dancing all night, with barely any sweat despite wearing her heavy leather jacket in the club the entire time. Bits and pieces of their respective clothing had fallen as they went. By the time they’d reached Amélie’s couch, Lena was down to her t-shirt and the tight blue tights she’d been wearing beneath her bright pink fishnets. Amélie rested beneath her in a black lace bra, the leather pants she’d worn to work, and bright purple socks covered in a pattern of black spider webs. (Lena had almost been more excited about the socks than when she’d finally gotten Amélie’s shirt off, declaring them ‘completely bloody adorable!’ the instant they’d been revealed.) Bubblegum-pink lips teased her bare skin as Amélie’s hands slid along the short, buzzed hair on the sides of the raver girl’s head, gasping as she could feel the gentle tug of teeth against her skin.

“Mmm, god, Amélie…y’smell so good, and you’re so _warm_ …you’re warm – you’re – _**SHITE!**_ ”

Lena sprang back so quickly that she seemingly had teleported, suddenly on the opposite side of the room with her hands clasped over her mouth.

Amélie sat up, confused, her head spinning from the emotional whiplash she’d just suffered. “ _Que c’est que c’est?_ Of course I’m warm, _chérie_ , what is the problem with that?”

Lena looked away, trying to find her jacket, then swinging back around, her voice rising in panic. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, oh _fuck_ – I thought you were – I’m _SORRY_ I didn’t _KNOW_.”

“ **LENA**.” Amélie stood, suddenly flushed with anger. “Why are you acting like this? What did you _think_ I was? What do you mean you did not _know?_ ”

The smaller girl turned to look back at her, her hands falling away from her face, her voice suddenly very, very small. “I didn’t know you were _human_.” The irises of her dark eyes now almost glowed a rich red, and her canines had extended downward, their sharp little points now quite obvious as she nervously chewed on her bottom lip.

No, Amélie Lacroix was not a vampire.

But Lena Oxton _was_.


	2. Questions for an Answer

On a certain level, Amélie wanted to laugh. After years of bar patrons assuming that she’d been a vampire because of how she dressed and how she looked, she’d unwittingly met _an actual vampire_ , and had apparently fooled her, too.

Still standing half dressed in the middle of her living room, while Lena tried to regain some of her composure after having what Amélie now realized had been something rather like a panic attack, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and forced herself to sit down, the flash of anger she’d felt at first fading as she started to understand why Lena had been so shocked and confused.

“All right,” she declared, trying to be as calm as possible, “Lena, sit down. Let’s talk.”

Lena swallowed hard, blinking for a moment, her head tilting in confusion. Her eye color was slowly fading back to what had appeared ‘normal’ for her back at the club, and Amélie watched as the other woman’s extended fangs slowly began to recede. “Um…ohhh-kay…” Leaning into the kitchen, she grabbed a chair from the tiny round dinner table, then brought it over to sit down facing the couch. “Not that I’m complaining, but you’re handling this awfully well? This is usually NOT how the discussion goes when I accidentally out myself as a monster. Even a lot of other cryptids aren’t so keen on us, you know.”

Amélie shrugged. “The worst monster I’ve ever seen is just as human as I am. You met him tonight. You may be a vampire, Lena, but you aren’t a monster.”

“…that’s a unique way of looking at it,” Lena admitted, straightening up slightly, “I guess it helps you work for L’Enfer. One thing to live in a city you know has a sizable non-human population. Another to get cheek to jowl, yeah?”

“Mm.” Amélie shrugged. “People always assumed I wasn’t human because of how I look and how I like to dress. I met a few different types of cryptids as I grew up, but they weren’t very common in Annecy. Moving to New York after I married, with so many more living here, was different, but then almost everyone was strange to me.” She smiled. “What was one more thing on top of all that?”

Lena chuckled weakly. “What indeed.”

“So,” Amélie settled into her couch, “my turn to ask a question: what did you think I was?”

Lena took a breath. “You really do pull off the act well. I didn’t necessarily think you were one of us – vampire, I mean – but selkie, maybe? Bogeywoman, possibly. Your skin color’s almost bang on for one. Either way would have been…”

Amélie raised an eyebrow as Lena trailed off, waiting for her to continue.

“It’s safer. For both of us, honestly. Or it _should_ have been.” Lena sighed. “ _Why_ did you have to invite me in? Why didn’t _I_ ask first, dammit?”

“That matters?”

“Of course it does.” Lena sighed. “Look – it’s not like the movies, ok? But there are some things about us that work a certain way, and there are rules. One of those rules is that we can’t go into private places that we aren’t welcome. Once you open that door, though, it’s hard to close it to us again.”

“Ah.” Amélie considered that before asking her next question. “You keep saying ‘safer’. Why?”

“Human blood’s different. Hard to resist once we’ve had even a tiny drink. Its instinct – what nature built us to do, yeah? Even cross-fertile species – finfolk, lilu, weres – don’t taste the same. I can just have some fun and not be afraid of losing control. If they agree to let me feed, I take enough to keep me going, but I don’t get as strong an urge to go back for more. Not compared to how I feel after drinking from a human.”

Suddenly a few more things made sense. “Your…routine, at the club. Is that why you pick a different partner every week? Never the same twice?”

Lena slumped in the chair. “Ha. Here I thought I was being clever.”

Amélie couldn’t resist the urge to roll her eyes. “You’re rather distinctive _, chérie_.”

“You’d be surprised,” Lena smiled, “but I suppose I have been a bit predictable. Winston knows me. Said it was OK for me to drop by, long as I didn’t cause any problems at his club.”

“And the girls?”

Lena shrugged. “All sorts, yea, but usually I’ve got a good eye for other cryptids. The blonde I went home with last week was a rusalka. Lovely gal. Plays viola at the Met, I found out. But I always move on. Weaker urge is still an urge.”

“So you protect your…dance partners, then?”

“Exactly. I used to be on decent terms with a…well, call him a ‘colleague’ living in Chicago. Met him back in London back before I decided to come over in ’89. Jack had a…friend. Fed from him almost exclusively, after a while. Got addicted, basically, and one day he snapped out of it to find that he’d drained his poor Gabriel dry.”

“What happened then?”

Lena looked away. “A vampire can turn a human. That’s how we breed, basically. But they have to be alive when you introduce your blood to them. What you get from introducing our blood to a corpse, even a fresh one…isn’t right.”

Amélie winced. “I’m sorry. That…sounds unpleasant.”

“That’s a word you could use.” Lena sighed. “What came back that night was a ghoul who hated Jack twice over. Once for killing him, and hated him even worse for being so bloody selfish as to try bringing him back against his will. Jack didn’t take that well, either. They spent the next fifty years trying to kill each other before I got tired of it all and fucked off to NYC.”

Amélie frowned. “You said you came to America in 1989. If they were in Chicago and you’d lived there… How can they have been fighting for 50 years? That doesn’t make sense.”

Lena laughed – really laughed – for the first time since she’d discovered her mistake. “I meant I came across the pond in _1889_ , luv.”

Amélie blinked. Tried to process that. Couldn’t. “How old _are_ you?”

Lena smiled. “That’s not the sort of question a gentleman answers.”

“How fortunate I’m asking you, then.”

“Oh, rude!” Lena giggled, but her smile faded again as she explained her history. “I got turned in 1778. I think the one who did it was trying to do me a favor – I’d caught smallpox. Wasn’t going to be much left of me otherwise. He taught me enough to survive, gave me the basics on how it worked. Sent me packing soon as I had it down. We’re generally not what you call social creatures – too many in an area affects the food supply. Course that was before things like blood banks and the internet, but like I said – rules.”

“Are there others like you in New York?”

“Probably. I don’t try to go much outside what I consider my home territory, honestly. I moved around the city for a bit to figure out where I felt the most comfortable, then settled into Bed-Stuy almost twenty years ago. I get out here and there, but generally I like to stay with what works.”

Amélie smiled. “I suppose wondering if a few work on Wall Street would be a bit too obvious.”

That got them both laughing, and Lena finally seemed to truly relax. Amélie wished she didn’t feel quite so tired. This really was a fascinating conversation. She’d meant to ask how true things like sensitivity to sunlight or garlic were, but when she attempted to speak, a yawn swallowed her words instead.

“Ah, look at me,” Lena chided herself, “kept you up well past your bedtime.”

“It wasn’t quite what I expected when I invited you in,” Amélie admitted, “but it was a very interesting evening. I would love to talk more…perhaps tomorrow?”

Lena shuffled slightly, nervous again. “You really sure?”

“If you’re so afraid of losing control around me – which I suppose is a compliment of sorts – we could meet in public. A park, perhaps, or for coffee.”

“Could do, yeah.” Lena picked her jacket off the floor, then fished out her phone. They traded numbers and the vampire promised to text her with a time they could meet after they’d both had a chance to rest.

As she walked Lena to her door, Amélie didn’t press for anything else. Lena didn’t allow herself to offer.

After she finished undressing and made her way into bed, Amélie found herself thinking of the all-too-brief time they’d spent kissing before things had gone so spectacularly sideways, and as she dreamed, her subconscious teased her with thoughts of what it might have felt like for those sharp fangs to have pierced the skin of her neck.

* * *

 

**LENA**

_ 11:45 _

Hello! Awake yet?

_I am. Once I have coffee I may even decide that is a good thing._

Hah.

Ever had brunch at L’Antagoniste?

_How much money do you think Winston pays me?_

They aren’t that bad, promise.

Besides, my treat – call it an apology for last night?

_You have nothing to apologize for._

_But I am not so foolish as to turn down free food._

Marvy. 12:30?

_Très bien._

* * *

When Amélie arrived at the restaurant, casually dressed (for her) in jeans and a ruffled blouse, she walked obliviously past where Lena was waiting for her. Twice.

In her defense, though, she’d been looking for bright pink hair and that black leather jacket. The woman sitting at a small table near the back had rich brown hair that been parted and styled up into a rather rakish, windswept look. Dressed in a light blue denim top and slacks, her eyes danced from behind the dark lenses of her small round sunglasses as Amélie sat down.

“I was going to say something if you missed me a third time,” Lena admitted with an amused little smile, “but it was cute to see you bustling around looking for me.” Winking, her smile transformed into more of a smirk. “I might have also enjoyed seeing your bum in those jeans.”

Amélie rolled her eyes. “You are clearly a menace, and you cheated.”

“That is true, and also true,” Lena confirmed with a giggle, “anyway – take a look at the menu? The barmaid’s been by twice already.”

The Frenchwoman had already started to figure out what she wanted to eat when she offered her brunch date a skeptical look. “I’m sure you’re aware no one uses that term anymore.”

Lena just grinned, then turned to smile at their server when she arrived at the table

“Ready to order, ladies?”

Lena gestured to Amélie, who gave the server as polite a smile as she could manage on six hours of sleep and zero caffeine. “ _Croque madame_ , and a coffee.”

The blonde server smiled back far more energetically, and Amélie immediately decided she hated her. “Got it! And for you, miss?”

Lena flipped her menu over in one hand. “Do you still have the organic Darjeeling?”

“Absolutely!”

“Lovely. Cup of that, please, and the _Paris-Brest_?”

The waitress nodded, then closed her order pad. “All right! I’ll have your drinks for you in a moment.”

Amélie waited for their orders to be served before asking the most obvious question: “So, you can eat here?”

Lena swallowed a bite of her pastry, then nodded. “Don’t get much out of it past the taste – aside from the need to use the loo later – but yeah. Some do, some don’t. I personally like the reminder, though sometimes I need something with a really strong flavor to wake my taste buds back up if I haven’t had anything solid in a while.”

“Hence why you are starting your day with that ridiculous amount of sweets,” Amélie observed with a faint edge of revulsion, “Aren’t you afraid that you’ll rot your teeth?”

“Oh, you think you’re clever, yeah?” Lena rolled her eyes. “Always had a sweet tooth, honestly. Beyond that,” she shrugged, “I heal fast. Lost my teeth a few times, grew them back. Same with most other kinds of injuries. Only problem is the more I have to recover, the hungrier I’ll be when I’m done.”

Amélie’s mood had improved as the caffeine hit her system and her sandwich had steadily disappeared. “So obviously sunlight is not fatal. But it seems like your eyes are sensitive?”

Lena nodded. “Got it in one. Helps if I’ve eaten recently. Overcast days don’t hurt either.”

Amélie considered apologizing for complicating the vampire’s dietary routine, but decided it would do more harm than good. “What about your hair?”

“What, this old thing?” She lightly tugged at the dark forelock sweeping over her brow. “Wig, though it is pretty close to my real hair color. Like I said last night – I’m not always so ‘distinctive’. I can force my hair to grow back out if I really want, but if I’m honest, I kind of fell into the punk thing and loved the look, so I usually just keep the undercut and get the dye job freshened up every now and again.”

“Ah.” Something else occurred to her after the server had dropped off the check, and Lena had produced a credit card. “Surely you don’t have to dress more conventionally for a _job_.”

“Ha! No, I have a very nice lad who manages my portfolio, and I just live off the interest. Easier for everyone that way. I just like dressing up, mostly.” Lena’s sly grin was back. “Besides, like I said, it was fun to see you get confused.”

“So what do you do with yourself, aside from showing up at Club L’Enfer like clockwork?”

Lena went quiet for a moment, considering how to answer that. “Well. I suppose you could say I do a bit of a neighborhood watch. Like I told you…we tend to be a bit territorial, and I personally don’t like seeing my neighbors bothered.” Finishing her tea, she tapped a finger against the top of her cup for a moment as she considered something, then lowered her voice slightly before she spoke again.

“There’s quite a few things in this world that I can deal with, but others might not be so safe. Like the bellend a few months ago who decided to try breeding a bloody cockatrice with his hens thinking he’d get ‘heirloom chickens’. Fucking hipster gobshite. Almost was tempted to let him get a real good look at what he’d done, _then_ clean up the mess.”

Amélie shivered slightly at the thought of someone unleashing a flock of baby cockatrice into a densely populated city. “I might have. He could have killed a lot of people with that foolishness.”

“Fortunately the Bronx Zoo has a good cryptozoology program these days. After I got a hood on it so it couldn’t see anyone, I stuffed the cock in a steel box and dropped him off there safely, gave the guy a lecture he’ll never forget about how stupid his little idea was, and hopefully that’s the end of that foolishness. But…yeah. I guess you’d call that my job, as much as anything. Anyone who lives in my home is under my protection, and I take that seriously.”

“I honestly am torn between finding that fascinating and terrifying.”

Lena smiled wistfully. “It has its days, either way.”

* * *

After brunch, they’d gone for a short walk, with Lena pointing out the building she lived in when they passed it, a few blocks away from the restaurant. “Only fair you know,” she explained, “seeing as you showed me yours.”

“Would you like me to come in?” Amélie’s lips quirked up in a grin. “As you said, you did get to see mine, even if we never made it back to the bedroom.”

Lena stopped as if she’d run into an invisible wall. “Cor, you do love to live dangerously, don’t you?”

Amélie smiled with just a touch of exasperation. “Lena. In the last 24 hours, you protected me from my ex-husband’s unwanted attentions, stopped immediately when you realized there was an…issue, answered every question I have asked of you about your ‘condition’, shamelessly flirted with me the entire time, and bought me breakfast.” Leaning in, she gently kissed the stunned vampire on her forehead. “If you are trying to scare me away, _ch_ _é_ _rie_ , you are doing a terrible job.”

“I guess I have been a bit shit,” the Englishwoman mumbled towards the sidewalk, “but seriously, as much fun as I am having…”

“Lena.” The suddenly serious tone of Amélie’s voice made the smaller woman look up. “Be honest with me – if I had been different, last night, what would you have wanted?”

“I think I gave you a pretty good idea on your couch,” Lena admitted, “and…yes. If you’d been ok with it, after, I’d have asked you if I could feed.”

Amélie had expected that answer. Nodding, she pressed the point. “What happens if you do not feed this week?”

Lena blew out her cheeks with a sigh. “I get hungry. Well, _hungrier_. Once a week is usually fine unless I run into some kind of trouble, but I really don’t like to stretch it. I get… distractible. If I missed two in a row, I’d start having a real problem. The worse the hunger gets, the harder it is to control. Since I make a point of NOT keeping numbers…I could try to track someone down and ask nicely, but that has its own problems.”

Lena’s gaze flicked upward for a moment. “The other option would be to see if I could pick up some whole blood from a doctor I know, but that’s not exactly like ordering takeaway. I usually try to set that up in advance to avoid those kind of headaches if I think I’ll need it, or there’s a risk I might not be able to stick to my routine.”

“You are planning to be back at the club on Saturday?”

“…long as Winston doesn’t object?” Lena’s brows furrowed in thought. “I hadn’t thought about that. I guess I need to talk to him. We never really talked about me potentially feeding on one of his employees…he might be upset.”

“Suppose he asked you to stay away until he could notify the rest of the staff about you, to prevent other…mishaps?”

Lena wilted with a wince. “Shit. And he’d be well in his rights to ask me that. I’m a bit shocked that he didn’t let Athena or the bouncers in on it already.”

“So.” Amélie took a deep breath, then let it out. “I was grateful when you helped me last night, Lena. But I did not invite you up because I felt obligated. I invited you up because you’d made me rather _curious_ , these last few years.” She smiled a bit as Lena bashfully put a hand behind her head in response to that admission. “Because I _wanted_ to find out more. I appreciate your concern for my safety – but given what you’ve told me, I am just as concerned about _yours_.”

“You barely know me,” Lena objected weakly, “honestly, I could have been lying to you this entire time.”

“You could have,” Amélie acknowledged, “but given what happened last night, you would need to be an exceptional actress.”

“If we did this…I could hurt you.”

“You don’t have a monopoly on that.”

“No,” Lena admitted softly, “I suppose I don’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note - this will /probably/ update weekly as I wrap up a couple other things and put more steam into this, but I'm hesitant to make promises because my beta readers already want to murder me. 
> 
> Glad everyone is enjoying this so far!


	3. The High Cost of (Un)Living

Lena’s apartment was larger than Amélie’s flat, but nothing excessive or elaborate, which was oddly disappointing. She’d almost expected the vampire would have some kind of a penthouse after Lena had admitted that she actually owned the entire apartment building, but it was a fairly modest two bed, one-and-a-half bath. The only real concession to her ‘lifestyle’, as Lena jokingly put it, was the fact that her door was just off of the roof access stairway, for nights when she needed to pop in or out of the building without being seen by anyone.

Amélie blinked in confusion for a moment as she tried to imagine how that would help. “You enter and leave by the roof?”

“Sure,” Lena confirmed, “Fire escape’s easy enough for most of it, and I can leap a fair bit higher and longer than you, luv. Move faster, too.” Looking back, she winked around the dark lens of her sunglasses. “Apex predator, remember?”

Lena’s taste in music influenced her decorating, with framed concert photos, band posters (the living room was dominated by a mural sized version of the London Calling album cover on one wall), and a few prints depicting the night skyline of several other cities, including London. She wondered if, perhaps, Lena kept them as reminders of her former homes, since she also noticed Chicago as well.

As she was given the tour, Amélie noticed an elaborate stereo and a large collection of vinyl, a television and a small collection of DVDs, an unsurprisingly tiny kitchen, and that all of the windows she could see had been lined with tinting film.

“So,” Lena smiled as they circled back to her living room, “that’s basically it, then.”

“It’s a lovely place,” Amélie admitted as she sat down on the couch, “rather more…contemporary than I expected.”

Lena snorted as she tucked her sunglasses into her breast pocket. “What, like I’d have the whole place covered in Ye Olde bits and bobs? Nah. That’s for the movies.” Grinning, she held up a finger before Amélie could return the quip. “And before you ask, no, I do NOT own a sword.”

Amélie slumped in mock disappointment, propping her head dramatically up with one hand. “I’m crushed, _ch_ _é_ _rie._ How can I live with these shattered hopes?”

Lena tossed a throw pillow at her, and both women started to laugh. The mood was much closer to how things had been at Amélie’s apartment. Light. Flirtatious. Amused. _Comfortable._ The knowledge of what Lena truly was added a certain undercurrent to it all, but Amélie found herself more excited than anything else.

“You’d really be surprised how often I get that,” Lena grinned, “mention you’re creeping up on the big Three-Oh-Oh, and everyone starts assuming you’re a bloody Highlander.”

Amélie’s eyebrows rose. “You saw that movie?” 

“Course I did. Sean Connery’s a work of art.” Lena settled on to the opposite end of the couch with a slightly too casual air. “So…”

“So.” Amélie couldn’t help the little smile she felt tugging at her lip as she shifted to face her hostess. They both knew where this was going – she’d been the one to insist, after all – but after observing Lena from afar as the confident ladykiller, seeing her just a bit awkward and uncertain about the steps in between was rather cute. Adorable, in fact, and it made Amélie’s pulse quicken even as she tried to keep a carefully neutral expression.

“Well,” Lena bit her lower lip again, working it lightly between her teeth for a moment, then smiled shyly, “there’s two ways we could do this.” She pointed a finger into the air. “Option one would be that we go straight to supper. Which, if I am honest, I’m still a little nervous about, but I am willing to hit and quit if you insist, and let you get on with whatever else you had planned today.”

Amélie felt as if she could hear her blood thundering through her body, and for a moment she wondered if Lena actually _could_. Running her tongue lightly over her lips in an attempt to moisten her suddenly dry mouth, she met Lena’s gaze with her own. “And what is option two?”

Lena’s eyes flashed with that absolute confidence she’d had back at the club, and even if Amélie hadn’t already decided on what she wanted, she would have been done for in that moment. “I do believe there was some unfinished business. I’d really love to try picking back up where we left off, if that’s all right with you.”

Amélie straightened up, and for a moment Lena’s eyes wavered with uncertainty.

Reaching out, Amélie grabbed the smaller woman by the back of her neck, pulling her in. “ _Viens ici, petite idiote._ ”

“Oh,” Lena breathed before their lips met, “right, then.”

* * *

A few hours later, they watched the sun slide past the New York skyline from Lena’s bedroom windows, their bodies intertwined, Lena’s head gently resting on Amélie’s shoulder. The bedsheets were thrown haphazardly aside, and clothing littering the floor. Lena’s wig sat crookedly atop her dresser, her pink hair askew, while Amélie’s dark hair fell in loose wisps over one side of her face, the rest fanning out against the pillow.

Amélie gently kissed the pink haired vampire’s forehead, a content smile on her face. “Well. I don’t know about the rest, _ma douce_ , but I certainly see why your lovers had very few complaints.”

Lena giggled, reaching up to stroke Amélie’s cheek. “I do aim to please.” Her eyes softened, raising an eyebrow. “So…I had absolutely no regrets about that, but I have to ask – are you completely certain about this?”

“I am.” Amélie’s was surprised how certain she felt as she reached down to gently scratch her fingernails along the back of Lena’s scalp, drawing a soft groan from the vampire. “I have told you this three times now, _ch_ _é_ _rie_ , and what we just did should tell you that I am far less virtuous than _Saint Pierre_.”

“Mmm…ok, sorry, you’re right.” Closing her eyes, Lena shivered slightly under Amélie’s fingertips. “You found my secret weakness, y’know? French women who give good head scratches.”

“Oddly specific,” Amélie observed dryly, “but I will take advantage, I suppose.”

Lena smiled, then slowly uncoiled herself and scooted to the head of the bed. “All right, luv. Any preferences?”

“The neck is traditional, I assume.”

“Any good vein will do,” Lena admitted with a wink, “but I do love the classics. When I tuck in, my fangs will basically put a little bit of anticoagulant along the wound, and my saliva’s antiseptic. Just a basic band-aid does the rest.”

Amélie nodded, then relaxed back into the pillow, allowing Lena to gently run her fingers along her neck until the vampire made a satisfied little noise.

“I think that one will do. Just to get it out of the way – and yes, I tell all the girls this one – I’ll be taking about the same amount of blood as if you’d donated today. Same rules to go with. Drink lots of water afterward, eat extra protein, and no driving if you feel the least bit woozy.”

Amélie shrugged against the bedsheet. “I took an uber to the restaurant. I may be willing to meet a vampire for brunch, but I’m not insane enough to drive in New York City, _ch_ _é_ _rie._ ”

Lena laughed again, then gently bent down, her lips lightly tracing over the vein she’d found earlier. “Good to know where you draw the line.”

“Is there anything else I should know?”

Amélie could feel Lena’s lips against her skin as she chuckled. “Well…I will admit that most people enjoy this next bit.”

There was an odd sense of _déjà vu_ as she felt Lena gently kiss at the vein she’d found earlier, then gasped as the vampire began sucking against the sensitive skin to help bring a bit more blood to the surface. She felt the tug of teeth against her neck, and a moment later, a strange sensation – almost like a sharp pinch as she bit into the vein, followed by a wave of dizzying pleasure as Lena began to gently draw the blood up through her fangs. Amélie felt a moment of embarrassment as she moaned at the sensations running through her, but – by the soft noises Lena was making – the vampire seemed to be enjoying herself just as much.

Lena finished feeding surprisingly quickly, gently kissing the wound site and murmuring a soft “Thank you” before laying back down on the bed.

Amélie rolled onto her side to see that Lena’s eyes were that rich red color once again, just catching a glimpse of her still-bloody fangs before they slid away. “I must admit, I can see why this could become habit forming.”

Lena’s smile had a distinctly sleepy edge to it. “Mmm. The first part was pretty good, too, y’know.”

“And I wasn’t just talking about the second part, _ma belle._ ” Amélie murmured back as she reached out to draw the smaller woman against her, her eyelids slipping closed as Lena snuggled in.

* * *

**WINSTON**

_14:21_

Lena, Athena says that you gave my bartender a ride home last night.

Athena tried to call and check on her, since I understand her ex snuck into the club and caused some kind of a problem, but Amélie isn’t answering her phone.

Was she OK when you dropped her off?

By any chance did you happen to talk to her today?

We’re both a little concerned right now.

 

_16:04_

Lena?

Did you fall asleep watching Bond movies on your couch again?

 

_19:12_

_Sorry! Had my phone on silent._

_Um. Funny you’re asking about Am_ _é_ _lie_.

_I thought pretty much all of your staff were cryptids of one flavor or another?_

I consider her to have honorary status. B]

Besides, you met Gérard…enough said.

Why do you ask?

oh.

oh no

please tell me you didn’t

 

_She invited me up!_

_I didn’t know!!!!!!_

_Maybe_ SOMEONE _might have mentioned that rather important exception?!_

Lena, NO.

 

_Nothing happened last night._

That’s good.

 

_I tried to take her to brunch to apologize._

…

Tried.

 

_Well, OK, we had brunch._

_And then we went for a walk._

_Talked about…things._

_…and she’s napping in my bed at present._

_Guess she had her ringer turned off too._

Oh my god, Lena.

 

_I know, ok? I know. :((((_

_Look, I’m not proud._

_But she cornered me about what would happen if I didn’t feed this week._

_And then she told me to invite HER upstairs._

_And your bartender is a fucking animal in bed by the way._

That was oversharing.

_right, sorry, luv._

_Been so long since I had the straight stuff, I almost feel a little drunk._

I’m going to let Athena know she’s OK, at least.

But when you sober up I would appreciate if you came to my office to talk about this. Please.

ASAP.

_Tomorrow morning?_

OK.


	4. Step Into My Office

Once Amélie woke up on Monday morning, Lena ran the Frenchwoman back over to her building before heading over the bridge, trying to keep from getting too bogged down in the morning commuter traffic. She’d dressed in a reasonably ‘business casual’ top and pants, but had decided to leave her wig at home. Freshly fed, her eyes didn’t ache when she looked into the clear morning sky, her senses feeling sharp and clear without being painfully aware of the heartbeats and breathing that surrounded her as she walked blocks that separated where she’d found parking from Club L’Enfer’s building.

The rolling doors that protected the front of the club were still in place, but the tall form of Athena was standing at the employee entrance, arms crossed over her chest.

“So,” the Greek woman observed as Lena came around the corner. “You’re Lena, then?”

“Hiya,” she confirmed with a wave, “Athena, yeah?”

“That’s right.” Lena winced at the coldness in her voice. This close, she could sense the stone woman’s heartbeat, like the steady kick of a bass drum, and how the tempo picked up as soon as she’d realized Lena was there. If she’d been in the other woman’s shoes, and found out a vampire had made a quiet deal with her boss to look for food, she’d have been pissed off, too. “Winston’s upstairs.”

Lena began climbing the stairwell up to the club’s office and employee locker / dressing rooms (and the proprietor’s apartment) and noticed Athena waited for her to take a few steps up before locking the door and following her up.

“So I guess Winston talked to you about me?”

“Oh, yes. We had a _conversation_ last night.”

This was going to be all kinds of fun.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Lena hung a left, then knocked on the widened office door. Technically she _had_ the occupant’s permission to enter, but given the situation…well. Rules.

“Come in!”

Lena pushed on the door, letting it swing inwards before she entered the room. Lena tried to keep her face looking reserved, given the situation she was there to discuss. It wasn’t too difficult to keep her poker face in place at sight of a seven foot tall, shaggy, black-furred sasquatch, after all. The problem was that Winston was wearing a bright orange Hawaiian shirt (decorated with little test tubes and atom symbols) over a blue t-shirt that read “ENTROPY ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE,” and the total effect was just too cute.

“Hey, big guy! Looking very flash today.”

Winston huffed a soft laugh, turning in his overbuilt office chair. “Good morning, Lena. Do you mind if Athena stays in the room with us?” Looking over to where the oread was shutting the door, he gave a weary smile, affection in his dark eyes. “I think she’s concerned you’re going to hypnotize me.”

Lena shrugged as she sat down in one of the smaller chairs next to a bank of security camera monitors. “Wouldn’t even know where to start with that, but that’s fine, luv.”

Winston nodded, leaning back a bit and lacing his fingers together over his barrel chest. Lena felt at ease – the big guy was a total love, always had been since she’d met him back when he was buying hair removal products by the case in an attempt to fit in a bit more easily while studying physics at Columbia.

That had been before his uncle had died and left him this building, and Winston had decided to transform the lower levels into a place where the various cryptids around town could let their guard down. The beat of his heart was a rising and falling rumble that always put her in mind of ocean waves – a calm surf, not the chop of agitation. Lena took a deep breath, then glanced to Athena before focusing back on her friend.

“I guess the first thing I need to ask – am I still welcome here?”

Winston’s eye ridges raised, and she saw him look over in some kind of silent communication with his bar manager before he looked back. “Well, I’d like to discuss what happened before we start going into that.”

Lena nodded, opening a hand in a silent request for him to go on.

“Had you originally planned to try taking Amélie home Saturday night?”

Lena shook her head immediately. “No. I mean, she’s beautiful, but I don’t really drink here, and I tend to focus on people on the dance floor, not the staff. I was actually chatting up someone else when I noticed the knobhead grab her arm. Asked her to excuse me and went over to help Amélie out.”

Winston nodded. “And after Gérard left?”

“Well,” Lena looked over to Athena, “first you came over to speak with her about what had happened. After you went to go upstairs – talking to you, I assume?” Winston nodded, so Lena went on. “I asked where she had to go afterwards, and when she said she needed to walk to the subway and then take the train…” Lena shrugged. “The way Gérard left, he looked angry – more than just a simple rejection. Right and truly furious. Didn’t like the idea that he might try jumping her on her walk to the tube.”

Winston nodded. “So you offered to drive her home?”

“Would you believe she lives in Crown Heights? Hop, skip, and a jump from my building. Funny how that goes. Anyway, yes. So I went and danced until chucking out time, then met her once she grabbed her purse.”

Athena spoke up for the first time, her voice still clipped. “Who – or what – did you think she was?”

“Her skin color’s almost bang on for a bogey, especially with the makeup she had on. Heartbeat’s close enough, especially when she was right pissed about being grabbed.” Lena gave Winston a mild glare. “And since someone _neglected_ to mention one of his staff wasn’t one of us…”

Winston raised his hands. “My fault. Yes.”

Lena let him off the hook with a smile. “Anyway…we talked on the drive back, and when I got to her place, she asked if I wanted to come upstairs. So…”

Winston coughed. “Please don’t go into too many details.”

Athena snorted softly, and Lena grinned. “Well. Short version is we were on her couch when I realized she was a lot warmer than I expected – and smelled, um, well…different than a bogey or selkie would have. Which was my other guess, before I found out.”

Athena spoke up again. “What happened then?”

Lena sighed, flopping back in the chair. “I lost my _shit_ is what happened. Almost jumped right through the ceiling trying to get away from her before I did anything. Which she didn’t really take very well.”

“No,” Winston admitted, “I imagine not.”

“Anyway…my fangs had popped pretty much on reflex, so that game was up. Usually I’ve had a talk and gotten an ok before that happens, so I was feeling like a total knob. But would you believe she actually got me to calm down and talk?”

“Yes, actually.” Athena came around to stand by Winston’s desk. “With the exception of dealing with Gérard, almost nothing fazes Amélie. It’s part of why she’s such a great part of the team here.”

“Well,” Winston smiled, “that and the way she handles the specialty cocktail menu. Plenty of bartenders can make a good Manhattan. It takes someone with a real gift to make a good martini for a patron who needs it cut with kerosene.”

Lena grinned. “So we talked about…who I was. What I was. What I had thought was going on. She was really interested in my, ah, routine…I guess you lot have a betting pool?”

“We do?” Winston gave Athena a confused look.

Athena coughed. “Well, we _did._ Amélie and Hana were running it. We just thought Lena was a pick up artist.”

“Huh.” Winston appeared to file that away for future reference. “So you went home afterwards?”

“Yeah,” Lena confirmed, “and texted around noon on Sunday ask if she wanted to have brunch so I could apologize for…well, mucking up what should have been nice end to the evening.”

“So you said,” Winston agreed, “and Amélie eventually started asking what would happen if you didn’t feed regularly?”

The vampire nodded. “Tried to duck it a bit – but she started asking what would happen if you told me to stay away from L’Enfer for a bit, or if I had to try to figure out a new way to get what I needed without just, I don’t know, dive bombing a mugger or something.”

Winston gave a soft ‘hm’, then looked over at Athena in another silent conference before he turned back. “At which point…?”

Lena looked at the floor. “Like I told you last night – I tried to just play it off a bit, and she wasn’t having it. I’d pointed out my building when we walked past. She told me to invite _her_ up. Actually, a bit more like ordered.”

Athena raised an eyebrow. “ _She_ ordered _you_ around?”

Lena grimaced. “Yeah, well, apparently I have a bit of a weakness.”

Winston coughed. “I’d prefer to avoid any additional oversharing, thanks.”

Athena actually laughed at that. That kick drum heartbeat had become a lot more regular, Lena realized. Maybe this was going to be OK?

Well. She had plenty of problems still, but this part at least.

“The short version is: we went up to my flat, and we talked a bit more. And after I’d finished properly apologizing for bollocksing it up, I asked her one more time if she was absolutely sure about going on.”

Athena sighed. “I have a feeling she told you to stop stalling?”

“Not in so many words,” Lena admitted, “but yeah.”

Winston nodded. “I know that part of why you asked my permission to…frequent…the club was that you were worried about the risks of feeding from a human. There’s no really polite way to ask this, but…how did it go?”

“Bloody fantastic, if you’ll pardon the pun.” Lena laughed at herself for a moment, then became more serious as she sat back up. “I was able to stop myself before I took anything past what I knew would keep the hunger under control. Maybe what I’ve been doing the last few years helped. Not sure. But I took just what I needed, and we cuddled for a bit before I woke up and noticed you’d buzzed my mobile. Which is where you came in.”

Winston nodded. “One of Athena’s concerns, after I explained the situation, was that Amélie let you feed without knowing the risks – or giving proper consent.”

“You said that earlier, too.” Lena offered a dry smile. “Athena, did you watch a lot of Hammer films growing up?”

“I have no idea what those are,” the oread frowned, “or what that has to do with it?”

“Vampire flicks. UK cinema,” Lena answered, “Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing – great stuff. Lots of movies where Dracula looks deep into the girl’s eyes and she slumps into his arms before he bites down, hypnosis, all that.”

“Oh. Well…yes, I suppose that was one of my concerns.”

Lena shook her head. “Not really a thing. I’m stronger than a human – probably than most of the folks working at the club, if I’m well fed, ’cept maybe that Russian of yours. I’m faster, I’ve got a couple of other party tricks. But that’s where it stops. Nothing that could affect someone’s mind – and believe me, I spent as much or more time trying to talk Amé out of it as I did anything else.”

Athena considered that, then nodded. “I see. Thank you.”

“Sure.”

Winston tapped his fingers together for a moment. “Well, I don’t see any reason to keep you out, Lena…but I have to ask, what happens between you and Amélie now?”

The vampire slumped with a frown. “Luv, I have no fucking idea. Usually everyone knows it’s a one-time deal before we walk out the door. This…it all just _happened_. If I hadn’t looked over at just the right time to catch what was happening between Amélie and Gérard, I’d have probably gone home with the bird I’d been dancing with and been none the wiser.”

“Ah. Sorry.”

“Yeah, well…I guess we’ll see? I mean…I don’t know. I’ve barely known her a couple days, but she’s…I haven’t met a human like her in a long time. Haven’t met a _person_ like her in a long time. And did I mention the sex? Because the sex was _really_ amazing. I’ve met wadjet who weren’t so flexible.”

“Lena.” Winston buried his face into one shaggy-furred hand. “Please stop.”

“Ok, ok, sorry. But…yeah, I don’t know. I don’t want to trash what I’ve been doing and start from scratch. At the same time, I don’t think Amélie would let me walk away from her if I tried. But I’m not quite sure how things are going to work now. I have a couple ideas for the short term. Got to call a couple people, try to figure out the rest.”

Winston nodded. “All right. For now…we’ll be hands off.”

Lena raised her hand. “Can I ask one thing?”

Winston tilted his head slightly. “Depends on what it is.”

Lena’s voice grew serious. “If I start getting weird about Amélie – or if things go sour with us – I need you to be able to shut me down. Get me out. Keep me out. Keep her safe.”

Winston raised an eyebrow to Athena, who nodded back at him before he spoke again. “Why don’t you come in before we open up on Thursday? I want Aleksandra to get a good look at you, and for you to give her an idea of what some warning signs would be. Past that…I’ll make a couple calls of my own. I know someone who might have a few ideas.”


	5. Back to Reality (...ish)

For most of the week, Amélie had worked her normal shifts at L’Enfer, with Athena quietly letting her know to speak with her or Winston immediately if she had problems with anyone. She honestly felt a bit annoyed that they seemed to be as worried about Lena as they were Gérard, but she supposed she understood, given Lena’s own concerns.

She’d gotten a text from the vampire telling her she’d had ‘a chat’ with Winston on Monday, but when Amélie went in to work the afternoon ‘Unhappy Hour’ shift, there was no sign of Lena’s distinctive pink haircut or the brown wig she kept for camouflage that night, or the day after. At least Lena finally sent her a text Wednesday afternoon about taking care of a few things, and that she’d see Amélie on Saturday for certain.

What Amélie quickly received all too many signs of on Wednesday evening was Hana, who made a made a beeline to the bar within minutes of clocking in and grabbing her first table.

“So we decided I won Saturday’s bet,” Hana announced without preamble as she punched in the customer’s orders, “and Winston says we’re fired if he catches us doing it again.”

Amélie shrugged as she glanced at the ticket, then began to pull pints and place them on a serving tray. “I believe it may be for the best.”

“Because you went home with her? Was she that good? Or that bad?” Hana’s tails flicked with excitement, and her tawny-furred ears peeked out from beneath the bow she normally kept them hidden behind as her eyes danced with curiosity. “I want to _knoooow._ C’mon. Please?”

Amélie put the final beer on the tray with a mock-resigned sigh. “What a shame that your table’s drinks are ready.”

“Ugh, _fine_.” Huffing as she took her tray, Hana left with a distinct flounce, tails snapping and swishing in her wake.

After the kumiho’s third attempt to pry information from her, Amélie looked over to where Athena was talking to one of the newer servers, and raised her chin slightly in a ‘come here?’ gesture when the manager made eye contact.

Athena disengaged, then walked over with a raised eyebrow. “Is everything all right?”

Amélie glared at the club’s manager with exasperation. “When you said to let you know about a problem with anyone, was Hana included?”

“Oh.” Athena winced sympathetically. “I take she’s been asking about what happened?”

“Incessantly.”

The manager tapped her fingers against the bar top in thought, then sighed. “We were going to have Lena talk to Aleks tomorrow before opening up. I understand that she would prefer to keep things quiet, and I don’t like outing anyone without permission…but if we _don’t_ tell Hana, gods only knows what she would do trying to find out.”

After considering that for a moment, Amélie sighed. “ _D’accord_. You’re probably right. Would you cover the bar for me? I’d like to text Lena so she is aware.”

Athena nodded immediately. “Of course – I’d feel better about letting her know, too.”

* * *

**LENA**

_19:41_

_Hello, chérie_

Hi, luv! What’s up?

Aren’t you at work?

_I am. I stepped away to talk for a moment._

 

I’m kind of torn between ‘Yay, hullo’ and ‘oh god what happened’.

You Ok?

_Yes. Mostly._

_I have been spending most of my evening trying not to kill Hana._

Hana – fox girl, right?

_Oui._

_She is very curious about what happened Saturday night._

_She only works here part time, so it’s the first time she’s been in since I left with you._

 

Oh. Gotcha.

Sorry, luv. Talked to Winston?

_Athena said you were coming in tomorrow to see Aleks._

_Which you should have told me yourself._

Sorry, yes, I should have.

_I’ll find some way to forgive you, petite idiote._

_Can we let Hana in on your secret?_

_She likely won’t rest otherwise until she finds out._

 

It’s all right. I’ve met a couple like her before.

Better you do it than for her to start doing something stupid trying to trick me into it.

 

 _Merci. Je pense_ _à_ _toi._

Thinking of you too. I’ve been trying to pick up some ‘groceries’ for a bit. Talking to a friend about it tonight actually.

Also wanted to give you some space in case…well.

 

_You should have called me. I would have told you to stop being foolish, and to come over._

_See your friend, and I’ll see you tomorrow._

_If you are worried about what I am feeling, just ask. I will not bite._

My arse. You left teethmarks in my shoulder for two days!

 

_C’est dommage._

_I was hoping for three._

Shouldn’t you be getting back to work? :p

* * *

Amélie returned to the bar, giving Athena a nod as she slipped back in before checking the open tabs. “It’s fine. She understands what is going on.”

Athena let out a sigh of relief, then finished pouring the cocktail she’d been shaking up. “Good to hear. I’m trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.”

“She’s really quite ridiculous,” Amélie shook her head as she chuckled softly, “sweet, though.”

“I did appreciate her helping you,” Athena admitted, “and until Winston told me what she _was_ , I’d assumed you two might just have a good time.”

The bartender’s smile turned distinctly wicked. “Who says that we did not?”

“I’m sure I’d rather not know. I’d swear every other word out of Winston’s mouth on Monday was ‘oversharing’.”

Amélie was about to offer a response to that when Hana popped up to grab another tray of drinks. “Oversharing, huh? What happened Monday? Hmmmm?”

Athena sighed. “Dammit, Hana!”

“Hey, I just got here at the right time!”

“After close,” Amélie cut back in smoothly, “I’ll tell you in the locker room.”

Hana grinned. “You’d better!”

Amélie sighed as the Korean left, then put on a cool smile as she went to take the order from a customer who replaced her at the bar.

It was going to be a long evening.

* * *

When they finally regrouped after closing and sat down in the locker room on the second floor, Amélie tried to figure out the best way to broach the subject.

Fortunately, Athena was more direct: “Amélie went home with a vampire.”

“ _No way_ ,” Hana breathed, her ears shooting back up in surprise, “seriously? Candy Machine? Does Winston know?”

“Yes, as it turns out, he does.” Athena still looked a little annoyed at the sasquatch, her eyes flicking over to the wall that the locker room shared with his office. “He allowed her to come in as long as she made all of her ‘dates’ aware of what she was, and obviously didn’t actually feed here.”

“Huh.” Hana pulled a pack of gum from her purse, working on bright pink piece of candy before blowing a wide bubble and snapping it back with a loud ‘pop!’ “So…what happened? Wait. Slimebag was here on Saturday, wasn’t he?”

“Briefly,” Amélie confirmed, “but Lena helped me to chase him off. She was concerned he might try to follow me home if I had walked to the station, so she offered me a ride back to Brooklyn instead.”

Hana’s eyes brightened. “Oooo, so her name is Leeeeeeeeena, huh?” Smirking, she worked her gum a few more times before blowing another bubble. “So, c’mon, that can’t have been the end of it.”

“Apparently Lena tries to feed on nonhumans, normally,” Amélie explained, biting her lip in thought. “She thought I was one. I had no idea when I invited her up to my apartment for a drink.”

“ _Oh. Em. Gee._ Seriously?” Hana grinned. “You _go_. About time you traded up.”

Amélie rolled her eyes. “I am so glad you approve.”

“Hey,” Hana said with a bit more kindness in her tone, “I like you, Am. You do deserve someone better than that total jerk.” Her grin sharpened. “Even if she had a different drink in mind?”

“She was…rather surprised to find out I was actually human,” Amélie admitted, “it scared her, in fact. She was afraid of hurting me.”

“Aw. That’s really sweet, actually.” Hana leaned back against her locker, swallowing her gum. “So what happened after that?”

“We talked. She took me out for breakfast. We talked more.”

“Aaaaand?”

Rather than give Hana any details she didn’t wish to share, Amélie undid the top two buttons of her blouse, then reached behind her to unknot the wide black choker necklace she’d been wearing. Pulling the fabric away, she revealed two tiny, round marks where Lena’s fangs had sunk into the vein. The dark scabs that had formed almost immediately after Lena’s feeding had healed almost completely in just a few days, nearly indistinguishable against the pale skin of her neck.

“ _Get out,”_ Hana gasped, her jaw dropping, “you really did it?! What was it _like_?”

Amélie smirked as she knotted the choker around her neck again. “That’s not the sort of question that a gentleman answers.”


	6. Tea and (No) Sympathy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place simultaneously with the end of Ch. 5.

Lena put away her phone after texting with Amélie, and walked out of the parking garage on 47th where she had left her car. She’d opted for her wig and a light coat over her shoulders to give the appearance of needing a bit of protection from the fall evening chill, a delicious smell guiding her a few blocks over to her destination.

A bell jingled cheerfully as she entered Golden Ratio Bakery, the smells of freshly baked bread, sweets, and a unique spiciness filling her nose in an intoxicating combination.

“One moment,” an accented voice came from the back, before a woman with richly colored skin and dark hair tucked under a bright blue kerchief came to the counter, flour dusted along the edge of the apron she wore over a silky shirt and jeans. “Hello, welcome to Golden Ra – oh, excuse me. Hello, Lena. I hardly recognized you without an obscenity printed on your shirt.”

Lena grinned as she walked to the counter and bakery case. “Hi, Satya! I decided to go a little casual.” The Indian woman’s heartbeat was always fascinating for her – a sort of thick, viscous sound. It was the only obvious tell (at least for a vampire) that the beautiful woman running the shop wasn’t all she appeared to be. “Could I get a cuppa and some gingerbread loaf? I’m meeting Ange here.”

“Ah, your usual, of course. I’ll start the tea for you – please find a table.”

Lena settled into a two seat table next to the window, draping her coat over the chair back. Sadly, her shirt was just a plain black T-shirt with a London phone box on it, but she made a mental note to dig out one of her more cheerfully filthy ones for the next time she stopped in.

A few moments after Satya delivered a steaming mug of masala chai and a plate laden with four thick slices of gingerbread loaf, the door opened again, admitting a tall woman with long, feathery white-blonde hair, dressed in an open coat, slacks, professional cut blouse, and a Mt. Sinai staff badge still hanging on a lanyard around her neck.

Lena waved, and Dr. Angela Ziegler smiled back, stopping at the counter to place an order before walking to where the vampire was waiting. In contrast to the shop’s proprietor, her heartbeat was a steady, sharp thud, like a drummer counting out the beat on a snare.

She’d met Angela while she was still a medical student, when a wrong turn trying to walk home after a rotation had forced her to make the undesired acquaintance of some rather nasty lads. Fortunately for Angela, they’d been stupid enough to try mugging her in the alleyway next to Lena’s building.

Lena would have given the buggers what for regardless, but once she’d learned what the young woman _was_ , she was doubly glad she’d chased them off before any harm had been done.

The young woman (an orphan, Lena later learned) was one of the few species even rarer and mythical than vampires – a caladrius. Closer to a bird in more ways than a human, Angela’s (carefully concealed) wings couldn’t lift her into the air for more than a foot or two, but a feather she plucked out and placed against a wound would heal nearly instantly. A few of her tears could cure a fever.

Which is why, long ago, the ‘angels born’ had been hunted almost to extinction.

The fact that Angela now worked as a doctor – a teaching doctor specializing in non-humans, no less! – was either incredibly admirable or completely barmy, and Lena wasn’t quite sure which. Even with a few winged species of cryptid like harpies or tengu coming out of the shadows over the past few decades, it was a hell of a risk.

So, of course, they’d become friends almost instantly. Bizarre and hunted oddities ought to stick together, after all.

“Hullo, Ange! How’s the hospital treating you?” Lena stood to hug the taller woman, feeling where her wings had been bound against her shoulder blades. “Hardly see you anymore!”

Angela smiled, squeezing for a moment before releasing the hug and settling into her chair. “Well enough. I’m afraid it’s been a busy year between this current class of students, my residents, and my research. Even Fareeha hasn’t seen very much of me of late.”

“Aw. That’s a shame.” Lena smiled and nodded to Satya as she delivered a black coffee and one slice of gingerbread to the blonde. “Thanks, luv.”

Satya smiled, a hint of mischief in her eyes. “Since I cannot help with your actual dietary requirements, I am grateful you come by so regularly to purchase food that you do not actually need.” Then, with a nod to Angela, she disappeared into the back again.

“So,” Angela smiled, “as much as I enjoy Satya’s baking, I’m assuming there’s a reason you wanted to see me?”

Lena nodded, swallowing a bite of her gingerbread. “Well, I do like getting a chance to hang out, but I did have a favor to ask.”

“I’ll go out on a limb and assume you need some…help?” Angela offered a speculative look as she sipped her coffee. “You seem like you’ve fed recently. Did something happen at the club?”

Lena fidgeted in her seat. “Not…exactly. But I don’t feel comfortable trying to pick up…um…donors right now.”

Angela smirked. “Oh, is that what you call them now?”

Lena stuck out her tongue. “Anyway, yes, please, I was wondering if you could help me with enough for a few weeks, at least. Possibly longer.”

Angela raised an eyebrow. “The last time we talked about this, you decided an occasional emergency supply was enough. What changed?”

Lena sighed. “Well, a couple things, and I’m still not really looking _forward_ to this – I mean, It’s nowhere near as fun to bite down on a plastic bag, but if I’m going to try having a girlfriend for the first time in –”

Angela held up a hand, her eyes going wide with surprise. “Excuse me, a _what_? Am I still talking to Lena Oxton?”

Lena flicked her fingers up at Angela in a ‘V’, glaring over her sunglasses. “Friend. Who is a girl. It’s…we’re…yeah.” Lena grimaced, taking a sip of her tea in an attempt to hide her discomfort at her friend’s increasingly smug smile. “So I’m very aware that it would be poor form to start dating someone and then go out for a one night stand to take care of supper. Particularly since, if I followed the routine that’s been working for me, I’d be picking them up in my bird’s place of employment.”

“Lena!” Angela was obviously delighted, voice ringing with amusement. “You mean you met someone at L’Enfer that actually made you _pay attention_? Who is she? _What_ is she? I have to know.”

“Her name’s Amélie,” Lena admitted as she looked away, thankful that vampires were incapable of blushing, “and she’s a human. Actually.”

Angela’s jaw dropped, her voice filled with surprise. “ _Lena._ ”

“I _know_ , ok?” Lena looked up long enough to see her friend’s concern, but couldn’t hold the eye contact. “I know. I thought she was something else. In a lot of ways she _is_ something else. She just handles all the crazy shit that comes with, y’know, us,” she gestured in a general wave at the world at large, “and goes on.”

The vampire’s voice grew quiet as she stared into the dregs of her teacup. “I don’t want to fuck this up, Ange. I like her. I do. But I’m terrified for so many reasons. I saw how Jack changed the longer he and Gabriel were together. Fucking hell, I saw what _Gabriel_ became, poor bastard.”

Angela frowned. “From what you’ve told me, I think you aren’t giving yourself enough credit.”

Lena shook her head before meeting her friend’s crystal blue gaze. “Angela, I already fed from her once. If I kept feeding from her every week – or more – there’s going to come a day where I don’t want to stop. I think I’ve got a pretty good sense of self control –”

Angela snorted at that, gesturing to the emptied mug of tea and three slices of gingerbread loaf still resting on Lena’s plate.

Lena puffed out a breath, sending her wig’s forelock flipping up. “OK, I have a pretty good sense of self control _when it comes to overfeeding_ , but…that’s how it works. That’s what we’re _meant_ to do. Far as I can tell, Mother Nature set us up to roam around where people are gathered and thin the herd now and then. We aren’t meant to stick around an area too long, and we aren’t supposed to get… _attached_. Every single thing I’m doing right now is going against that nature.”

The doctor made a thoughtful noise as she considered what she’d been told, resting her chin in one hand as the vampire continued on.

“I need to make sure I can take the edge off – keep things varied so I don’t start getting so fixated on her so much that I do something stupid. I know that getting this from you is a big thing to ask, but…” Lena sighed, looking back down at her hands. “Please. I want to make this work…and a huge part of that is keeping her safe.”

Angela’s eyes held sympathy, but she couldn’t resist one last little jab. “New York’s biggest serial dater trying to settle down. I’d go through twice the trouble to help you just to see this.”

“Oh, _thank you_ ,” Lena grumbled, but she shot the blonde a grateful look, “let me know how you want to handle things, ok?”

Angela nodded, taking a bite of her gingerbread. “I will. But I do get to meet this _Am_ _é_ _lie_ who has you so flustered?”

“Tell you what – come to L’Enfer next time you’ve got a free night, text me, I’ll meet you there?” Lena’s eyes sharpened as she realized an opportunity to get a least a little of her own back. “Maybe you could invite ’Reeha?”

A blush crept across Angela’s cheeks, which she attempted to hide behind her coffee. “You know she doesn’t like going clubbing.”

“Bet she’d change her mind if you sent her a pic of what you’d be wearing…”

Angela’s coat ruffled slightly as her carefully restrained wings twitched. “I suppose I could take my bindings off, at least while we’re inside…”

Lena smiled. “That’s the spirit!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P. S. Check out this [gorgeous art of our favorite vampire](http://three-legged-cow.tumblr.com/post/153836412084/hey-do-you-like-widowtracer-and-also-vampire-aus) by Marita Broodley and give her tumblr a follow!


	7. The Bear, The Fox, and The Nightingale

Normally Amélie worked evening to close on Thursdays, but today she made an exception, trading shifts and getting up early so she could go in for Lena’s ‘meeting’ with Aleks and Hana before the club opened. Lena was back in her ‘usual’ clubbing wear, while Amélie was dressed in a dark velvet coat, skirt, waistcoat, and blouse.

The kiss they shared after the bartender buckled herself into the passenger seat was brief but heartfelt before Lena aimed them back over the bridge, and they mostly talked about music and similarly mild topics until Lena was able to find parking.

When they arrived at L’Enfer, Amélie punched her code for the employee entrance, then led Lena up to the locker room, where she wasn’t surprised to see Aleksandra and Hana both waiting, the taller Russian woman leaning against one wall, the Korean woman shifting back and forth on her feet.

“You’re late!”

Amélie rolled her eyes. “We said we would be here by four. It is five minutes after.”

“My fault, really,” Lena admitted as she stepped around the taller woman, “parking was wretched.”

“So this is her, huh?” Hana almost skipped over to where Lena stood. “Hi, I’m Hana, that’s Aleks. So you’re a vampire? Can I see the fangs? Do you turn into bats? How about mist? Do you get extra powers by eating other vampires?

Lena giggled, shaking her head as she tried to answer the barrage of questions. “Hullo! Yes I am, possibly in a minute, no, no, and what the _hell_ , no, in that order.”

Hana sighed. “Castlevania has lied to me again. So, c’mon, fangs? Please?”

“You may as well,” Amélie advised, “it would be better to do it here than on the dance floor.”

“Oh, c’mon. I wouldn’t do that,” Hana pouted, “I’d chase her into the bathroom or something, jeez.”

Lena snorted. “I’m starting to see what you mean about her, luv.” Hana stuck out her tongue in reply, so Lena replied by opening her mouth and extending her fangs. The dark lenses of the vampire's welding goggles concealed her eyes, but Amélie would bet her irises had changed as well from what she had seen.

After remaining silent through Hana’s initial barrage of questions, Aleksandra finally decided to get a better look at the subject of discussion, shoving off the wall and crossing the room as Lena retracted her fangs again.

The massive Russian bouncer loomed over Lena as she swept her eyes over the shorter woman with new intensity, then leaned forward until she was almost on top of the vampire, her nose flaring as she took a breath so deep that Amélie swore Lena’s hair had flapped in the breeze.

“You do not smell dead. Why do you not smell dead?”

Hana’s face fell into her palm with an audible smack. “OH. MY. GOD. **ALEKSANDRA.** You don’t just ask someone ‘why don’t you smell dead?’!”

Then, turning to Lena, the kumiho leaned in and took a judicious sniff of her own, her tails swishing slowly at the edge of her skirts. “But seriously, why don’t you smell dead?”

Lena shrugged. “Well, I’m _not_ exactly dead, am I? I mean there’s a reason the term they always use in the films is ‘ Un-dead’. I didn’t die when I was turned, not really. I just…stopped. Won’t get any older, can’t get any younger.” Lena seemed to realize she was getting a bit too melancholy, stopped, took a breath, and tried to lighten the mood a bit with a grin. “As for anything else about how I smell, let me tell you, after spending almost a hundred and ten years without hot running water? Being able to take a nice shower and soak whenever I want is still a miracle. I’ve bought so many bath bombs that Lush ought to put me on the board.”

Hana giggled at that, but Amélie noticed Aleks was still giving the vampire a guarded look. Carefully circling the smaller woman, the Russian finally spoke again after completing another full circuit. “If I am protecting _solovyova_ from you, what else should I know?”

Lena considered that. “Well, I’m a lot stronger than I look – especially if I’m fresh fed. Pretty sure you’re stronger from what I can tell, but if for some reason I’m a problem, don’t let my size fool you. I’m pretty fast, too – and I can get faster.” Her grin turned crooked. “Amélie can vouch for how quickly I can jump across a room if I get startled.”

Amélie rolled her eyes at that, but she couldn’t quite hide a smile.

Lena’s wink made it clear she’d caught that before she went on. “Beyond that, I guess I’m about what you would expect? I still need to eat, even if its blood at least once a week instead of three squares a day. The longer I go – or if something forces me to burn through what I already had in my system, like recovering from an injury, the hungrier I’ll get. Let it go too long and in theory I could starve myself to death.”

She paused, then looked apologetically over to her lover. “Amélie’s heard this already, but the longer I go without, or the more I burn up, the hunger gets harder and harder to keep in check. If I got bad enough I’d probably try to go for the nearest source of food no matter who or what it was.”

Aleksandra considered that, then nodded. “Winston said you hunt with heartbeat?”

Amélie raised an eyebrow. Lena hadn’t said anything about _that_. The vampire caught that, too, and gave her an apologetic look before answering the question. “It’s not the only thing, but it’s part of the package, I guess you’d say. I can sense different heartbeats, separate them, but if I’m decently fed it’s something I can put in the background – if I’m ‘full’ I don’t even notice unless I’m right on top of you. But the more I need to tuck in…” She shrugged again, leaving them to fill in the rest.

“How did you mistake me, then?” Amélie was genuinely curious.

Lena smiled. “A lot of the nearest to human heartbeats have the same basic rhythms, and the more are around me the easier it is for stuff to blur a bit.” She pointed to Hana – “You’re a little fast, but not so much to be obvious if I didn’t see the tails.” She looked over to Amélie again. “Yours is a bit on the slower end, but like I said that night – a bogey would be right about the same.”

Looking up into Aleksandra’s eyes, Lena whistled. “You, on the other hand, sound like a bloody diesel tractor. What the _hell_ are you, anyway? I always knew you looked tough, but good god.”

The Russian smirked, the first time her expression had changed since the Vampire had walked in the door. “That is a secret, _strigoi_.”

Lena put on a mock pout. “Aw. I showed you mine!”

Hana’s face went uncharacteristically serious. “Trust me – unless you absolutely need her to? It’s better she doesn’t.”

Amélie raised an eyebrow at the fox-girl, who just shook her head slightly. That certainly implied…something. She'd have to ask Hana about it later.

“Is not what we are discussing, anyway,” Aleksandra dragged the conversation back towards original topic, “any other weaknesses that I should know? How much is movies, how much real?”

Lena shook her head. “Movies are just that. Stuff a bulb of garlic in my mouth and my breath would be bloody awful, but it won’t _kill_ me. I can go out in daylight, especially if decently fed, but my eyes do better at night. Crosses, whatever. Past that…cold doesn’t bother me much. I’m not fond of really high temperatures, but I never liked being outside in the summers even when I was a girl. I mean, look at me!” Lena pulled her goggles up onto her forehead, then gestured to the freckles shot across her face before dropping them back into place. “I’d go from pale as a ghost to a Sunday roast in five minutes on a really sunny day when I was little. These days at least they make sunblock.”

“Ah.” Aleksandra grunted, then her expression turned serious. “And if I needed to stop you?”

“Aleks!” Amélie’s voice rose with a note of alarm. “ _What_ has Athena been telling you?”

Lena put a hand up. “No, it’s all right. I told Winston that if I got stupid, they need to keep me from doing anything. It’s a fair question.”

Amélie scowled. “We are talking about this later, _ch_ _é_ _rie._ ”

“Yeah, I know, sorry.” Lena sighed before she got back to business. “My bones break. I can get a concussion. Fire wouldn't instantly kill me, but if for some reason you have a flamethrower lying around, I’d have a very bad day, same as anyone else. Knocking me out takes a little more effort than most people, but it can be done – knock me about enough and I’ll go down. Obviously choking me out won’t do a lot, but I suppose a taser would work. The biggest risk is that the more damage I have to recover from, the more I’m going to need something when I wake up – but you’d probably be able to figure out something.”

“ _Da._ And if you will not stop…?”

Lena shuddered at the idea, her voice going quiet. “If you’re as strong as I think you are? Tearing my head off would do the job. I’ve never heard of someone _actually_ being staked through the heart, but I’d imagine the trauma would be just as lethal as it would for a regular human.”

Amélie couldn’t listen to this anymore. She wasn’t sure what bothered her more – that Lena was giving Aleksandra the explicit knowledge of how to hurt and kill her out of concerns for their safety, or that Lena might be _right_ to do so. It all had the air of a self-fulfilling prophecy in many ways. She went to the bar, busying herself with checking the bottles and garnishes, going through all of her opening routines to try and settle herself.

She’d thought it was working until a pair of leather clad arms slid around her waist. She didn’t jump, quite, but if Lena could sense her heartbeat, then she was quite aware how it was now racing. “How are you so quiet in those boots?”

“Sorry, wasn’t trying to be.” Lena sounded genuinely contrite. “Didn’t mean to startle. Are you mad at me right now?”

“Yes – maybe. _Je ne sais pas._ ” Lena’s arms loosened, and she turned to face her…god, what even were they? Lovers, technically? Two ‘dates’, and…well. At least she was consistent with having often messy, confusing relationships. “I know you are afraid of yourself, Lena. In some ways I understand why – but all this? Am I worth all this? Worth telling someone how to murder you?”

“In fairness,” Lena had pulled her goggles up onto her forehead and her eyes were grave, despite the slight smile she was trying to put on, “She probably should have known how to deal with me from the beginning – and whatever that girl is, I think she could handle me no matter what I did or didn’t tell her.”

Amélie considered that, and nodded. She’d watched Aleks pick a man nearly as large as she was up by his shirt and haul him out of the club one-handed, once. She had no doubt that if for some reason she had to stop Lena from getting in, Lena wouldn’t get in.

“Beyond that…” Lena sighed, rubbing at her forehead. “I know you think I’m probably being too paranoid, and you may be right. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I just…” The vampire shivered, and Amélie couldn’t help but put a hand on her shoulder, receiving a grateful glance. “Some of the stuff I’ve seen people do in my life isn’t nice at all, you know? Particularly around the risk of getting addicted to someone…I saw someone I thought was a thoughtful, kind, reasonable man turn into a complete and raving lunatic. It terrified me.”

“I didn’t just leave Chicago because I was sick of the Jack and Gabe show – I _ran_ because I was scared of what would happen the next time I tried to get between them. I’d spent a lot of time trying to keep them from killing each other or anyone else, and it just kept getting worse. I couldn’t handle that burden anymore, and the idea of ever turning into that…”

Amélie wrapped her in a hug, the smaller woman’s head coming just up to the shoulder of her jacket. “From what you’ve told me, and all the efforts you’re making now… You don’t give yourself enough credit, _petite idiote._ ”

“Hah. You’re the second person to tell me that this week. Well, except for the French bit. Which I understand, by the way.” Lena looked up, and her smile finally reached her eyes. “And I never answered your other question…yeah, you are worth it, luv. Do you have any idea how amazing you are? How incredible you are?”

“Perhaps I don’t,” Amélie admitted with a smile of her own, “but I would be willing to let you explain it to me after work.”

Lena stood a bit straighter, her eyes dancing. “I’d like that. Dinner and a movie at my place?”

“Do you have any food I can eat in your pantry?”

“Ahh…not as such, no.”

Amélie leaned down, and after a brief kiss, she laughed softly. “Perhaps it would be better if we went back to mine.”

“See, that’s why you’re brilliant,” Lena grinned, “I was just going to suggest stopping for takeaway. This is much better.”

Later, as the night turned to morning, Amélie wrapped an arm around Lena’s back as they snuggled on her couch, her more elaborate garb exchanged for an old t-shirt and a comfortable pair of sweats, Lena undressed down to her t-shirt and tights.

“Oh,” Lena turned her head slightly so she could catch Amélie’s eye with her own. “I meant to ask – what was that bit of Russian that Aleksandra called you?”

“It means ‘nightingale’,” Amélie admitted with a slight blush, “I used to sing. At one point I considered doing it professionally. I stopped after…” Even though Lena couldn’t really see it, she gestured with her free hand to encompass Gérard, America, everything. “I used to dance when I was a little girl, too. These days I mostly just sing after hours at work, now and then. Hana has dragged me out to a karaoke night with the others once or twice.”

“I’d love to hear, sometime.” Lena brought herself up for a kiss, then settled back down. “I play the bass. Used to be in a couple of bands. Do you have _any_ idea how hard it is to find a left handed Thunderbird? They didn’t even _make_ them in the factory when I was starting out. Had to string the bloody thing upside down.” The vampire’s eyes suddenly gleamed with the enthusiasm of a new idea. “You know, all we’d need is a half decent guitarist and a drummer an’ we could start a band.”

Amélie rolled her eyes. “One massive undertaking at a time, _ch_ _é_ _rie_.”


	8. Music In A (Different) Kitchen

“No, god, no!” Lena shook her head vigorously as she leaned against the bar at Club L’Enfer. “She’s not Goth, luv. Siouxsie is PURE punk. She got into music because of Johnny fucking Rotten for god’s sake!”

Amélie sighed dramatically as she placed the finishing touches on a pair of cocktails, then handed them off to a server. “I have no idea how I can love someone who is so utterly wrong on this subject. Robert Smith…”

“Oh, bugger The Cure and take Andrew Eldritch with you while you’re at it.”

“Oh, god, you two are doing it _again_.” Hana groaned as she entered a new order. “Is arguing about music, like, foreplay for you?”

Lena offered a slightly guilty look, thankful for the dark lenses of her goggles. “…no?”

Amélie’s little smirk did not help their case.

“Anyway,” Hana rolled her eyes, “let me know when those beers are ready.”

“Of course,” Amélie agreed, beginning to assemble the order, “go dance, _ma chou._ We can play more later.”

Lena saluted with a grin, and was about to disappear into the crowd again when she realized her jacket pocket had begun to vibrate.

 

**ANGIE**

_22:41_

Lena, do you happen to be out tonight?

 

_Cheers, luv! Yeah, I’m at L’Enfer._

_What’s up?_

 

Believe it or not, I finally have a free evening to meet your girlfriend.

Fareeha’s picking me up in a few minutes.

_Oh, that’s brilliant!_

_I’ll see you guys soon!_

* * *

 

Lena was delighted to see a distinct head of white-blonde hair (and even more distinct set of white feathered wings) appear from the club’s coatroom, followed by a woman with coppery skin and a severe expression.

The dark shoes and slacks Angela was wearing weren’t especially dramatic, but the white and silver bustier corset she was wearing more than compensated. Lena happily made her way through the crowd for a hug, laughing at the tickle of feathers as the doctor’s unbound wings swung around to briefly enclose her. “Look at you!”

“Well, you did suggest I dress up to help convince Fareeha to join us,” Angela winked, then turned back to the darker clad woman, “and it appears to have succeeded.”

By contrast to Angela’s outfit, Fareeha’s motorcycling leathers, gloves, and dark turtleneck couldn’t be more closed off, but Lena had to admit that if she had the ability to influence another person’s emotions through pheromones or skin contact, she’d dress like the Invisible Man too. Still, the lilu’s smile was genuine, the warmth of a Cairo sun in her eyes. “I don’t _hate_ it here, _habibti._ It’s just…tricky.”

Lena welcomed Fareeha with a hug as well, then smiled. “Well, I’m glad you’re both out. It’s been way too long, not counting Angie helping me with my shopping.”

“Crime doesn’t sleep,” the Egyptian deadpanned, “so neither do I.”

“Which is helpful when I need a ride home after 5am rounds,” Angela quipped, “but I do believe there is someone we’re supposed to meet.”

“Where _are_ my manners?” Lena grinned as Angela laughed, then lead the two women towards the bar, Angela reflexively tucking her wings back so she wouldn’t have to worry about smacking anyone accidentally.

Amélie moved behind the bar with a sure grace that Lena never got tired of seeing. Dark hair streaming out behind her, a crimson silk ascot wrapped around her pale throat before disappearing beneath a white brocade vest.

Lena hadn’t realized she’d stopped to stare as the bartender handled a customer’s order until Angela chuckled, lightly tapping her on the shoulder. “I’m going to go ahead and assume that’s her, then?”

“Wha? Oh! Sorry,” Lena reached up to scratch the back of her head with an embarrassed smile, “yeah, that’s her. Come on, let’s say hello!”

By the time they’d reached the bar, Amélie had cleared her queue, allowing Lena to settle into what had become her usual spot over the last few months, while the other two women flanked her like a pair of bookends. “Brought a couple of friends by, luv!”

Amélie raised an eyebrow. “Impressive, given you never left the club.”

Lena pulled her goggles up with a grin. “Miracles of modern science, wot? Anyway – meet Angie and Fareeha.” She was delighted to see Amélie’s remarkable _sangfroid_ crack a bit at the sight of Angela’s wings, her eyes widening with surprise.

“ _Bonjour_ ,” Amélie raised an eyebrow as she shook Angela’s offered hand, “it’s very nice to meet you both. I haven’t met many of Lena’s friends outside of Winston, yet.”

Lena didn’t miss Angela’s raised eyebrow before the blonde turned her attention back to the bartender. “Perhaps we can help correct that. Angela Ziegler – I’m very pleased to meet you at last! I’ve heard quite a bit about you.”

Amélie’s smile turned a bit evil. “Have you…” Giving Lena the ‘I will extract punishment for this later’ look, she exchanged a nod with Fareeha, noticing that she didn’t offer a hand. “May I get you ladies anything?”

Angela considered that for a moment. “Can you make a gold rush?”

“Honey syrup, lemon, and bourbon on the rocks?”

“Yes!” Angela’s eyes lit up. “I’ll take a double, please.”

Fareeha rolled her eyes. “Since I’ll be pouring her into bed tonight, I’ll just take a ginger ale, please.”

Once both ladies had been set up with their drinks, Lena provided a bit of context. “Angie is the doctor friend I mentioned.”

“Ahh. Thank you for helping Lena with her ‘groceries’, then.” Amélie gave Lena a slightly softer smile once she had that bit of information. “Having an alternative has been very helpful. Even if it is not quite as…entertaining.”

Lena buried her head in her hands.

The doctor’s answering laugh was positively wicked. “Oh, you’re good. I _do_ like you,” Angela sipped her drink, closing her eyes for a moment to savor the sweet and sour concoction. “And this is quite lovely, thank you.”

“ _Merci_. But it seems I have a few more customers. If you’ll excuse me…” Amélie moved gracefully to her next patron, giving Lena another pleasant opportunity to ogle her girlfriend as she worked.

“I can see why you thought she was a cryptid,” Fareeha mused, “she’s got a serious _vibe_ going on.”

Angela raised an eyebrow. “Do I have reason to be jealous, Detective Amari?”

Fareeha smirked into her ginger ale. “I’m sure I don’t know, Doctor Ziegler.”

* * *

Angela and Fareeha decided to hang around until close, and after Amélie finished cleaning up and tipping out, they made their way over to one of the handful of pizza shops near Lena’s building that catered to the after-hours crowd, Lena driving her girlfriend, the doctor riding pillion on Fareeha’s motorcycle once Angela had concealed and secured her wings once again.

“I need to remember this place,” Angela observed after devouring a slice of white pizza, “anywhere open until six in the morning is worth patronizing when I get called in for an emergency case at two.”

“Especially if they’re actually half decent,” Fareeha agreed, “too bad they’re probably too far from my station to deliver.”

Amélie looked interested, sipping at her glass of water before joining the conversation. “Station? Are you a part of the fire department, Fareeha?”

Fareeha blinked, then laughed softly. “Oh, right, you don’t know, sorry.” She straightened slightly, something in the Egyptian woman’s eyes flashing as she spoke. “I’m actually NYPD. I work on the Interspecies Crime Task Force.”

Angela rolled her eyes. “She _is_ the ICTF. Give yourself more credit for the work you do, _schatz._ ”

“I see,” Amélie raised her glass in a sincere salute, “that cannot be an easy job, even in a generally tolerant city.”

“No, I’m afraid it isn’t – especially not lately.” Fareeha’s shoulders slumped slightly as she looked down through the table. “We’ve had a serious spike in hate crimes against non-humans lately. Nobody’s claiming responsibility, but there’s too many for this to be isolated incidents. I’m worried about what it may mean.”

Lena frowned, considering that. “Any patterns in the attacks?”

“I’m not really supposed to talk about work.” Fareeha paused, then continued on after the rote objection. After all, Lena had quietly helped her out once or twice before. “All of the victims have been obvious cryptids, though. No lilu, bogeys, or therianthropes as far as we can determine.”

“People who can’t pass easily,” Lena sighed, “buggering fuck.”

The vampire didn’t miss the detective giving her girlfriend a concerned look. “My thoughts exactly.”

Lena felt Amélie’s hand find her own, and squeezed tight. “Well, I’ll keep an eye out around my place, you know that.”

“I appreciate it, Lena.” Fareeha took a sip of her soda, then reached for a slice of the pizza. “Happier subject: Amélie, has Lena forced you to sit through twenty-four hours of Bond movies yet?”

“Oi!” Lena put on her best ‘wounded’ expression even as Angela put a hand over her mouth to (poorly) conceal her snickering laughter.

Amélie gave a mock sigh as she leaned back dramatically in the booth. “I learned almost as soon as we met that I will always be second to Sean Connery in her affections – but I have done my best to earn some small place in _ma ch_ _é_ _rie_ ’s heart.”

Lena had to admit that somehow being able to turn herself into mist was sounding pretty good as Angela and Fareeha both cackled with laughter. Shame she couldn’t.

Still, as Amé put a hand over her shoulder and leaned down to kiss the top of her head, Lena would admit it could have been worse.

* * *

Once they’d seen Angela and Fareeha off, Lena was happy to take them back to her apartment, where they helped each other undress before slipping into bed just as the first rays of dawn began to creep over the skyline.

“It was nice to meet more of your friends,” Amélie noted with a small but genuine smile as they snuggled into each other, “I would enjoy seeing them both again.”

Lena made a happy noise as she found a good comfy snuggling position. “Oh, Angie’s a total sweetheart. ‘Reeha too, under all the cop stuff and leather, but she’s a bit of a workaholic. They both are, really.”

“Given how busy they both must be; I am not surprised.” Warm lips gently slid over Lena’s collarbone, making Lena squeak softly as Amélie’s teeth grazed against her skin. “Are there any other friends I should meet eventually? Hana and Athena are about the only friends I really made after my divorce. Many of the others were Gérard’s acquaintances more than mine, here.”

Lena squirmed as her lover continued to tease her. “This is not _fair_ …”

“You didn’t answer my question…” Manicured nails began to scratch and scrape at the freshly buzzed side of her scalp, and Lena felt her insides turn to butter.

“ _Aaahhhhh_ …well, I have a lot of folks I know to say hullo to, but there is Satya. Runs a bakery and teashop over by 47th.”

Lena couldn’t see Amélie’s face, but by her tone she could imagine her wicked grin quite easily. Especially when her hands did _that_. “That sounds interesting. Is she another…acquaintance?”

Lena was really starting to fidget under her lover’s attentions, now. Of course she _could_ cheat and get out of this, but that wasn’t any fun, was it? “Mmmf…no, actually. Doesn’t quite…let’s just say she’s got more sugar than blood in her veins.”

“Ah, _je vois._ Well, it would be nice to meet her, sometime, too. Perhaps we could go have tea? I’m off Tuesday.” Amélie’s hands shifted, encouraging Lena to turn over to face her, and as they faced each other she captured her mouth in a long, slow kiss.

“Sounds like a date to me, luv.” Lena began slip her hands over her lover’s back, reacquainting herself with the lovely territory beneath her fingertips. “Now, I got the impression you might have something in mind…?”

Their mouths met again, and that was the end of the morning’s conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there you go - Fareeha on camera at last! 
> 
> Meanwhile, we have more [awesome art from Marita](http://redcap3.tumblr.com/post/154422420062/candyfloss-art-update), who has basically become the official series artist. :) Check it out and please give her some love, too!


	9. A Kiss In The Dreamhouse

“Goth-e-oke?” Lena stared at her girlfriend as she explained the newest addition to Club L’Enfer’s weekly events calendar. “Seriously? Has Winston completely gone round the twist?”

Amélie shook her head. “He’s brought in a new DJ. Apparently this is something he’s done at other clubs and it has been reasonably popular. Besides, we rarely have a large crowd on Thursdays. I suppose it cannot be any worse.”

“I dunno about that, luv…” Lena let the subject go, but made a mental note to give Winston a proper razzing about it later. “Anyway – aside from that, does this DJ seem to be any good?”

“He has decent taste,” Amélie admitted, “and apparently does some original work. I enjoyed what I heard when I was working on Monday. The real test will be the weekend. If he can keep things moving, I think he’ll work out.”

“Huh.” Lena smiled as a thought suddenly occurred to her. “If I come in, do you think I might get to hear you take a turn on stage?”

Amélie blushed faintly, suddenly looking away shyly. “I don’t think the staff is supposed to perform.”

“I bet you could slip away…” Lena slipped her fingers around her lover’s hand, giving her a reassuring squeeze. “Please, Amé? I promise to cheer for you no matter what.”

“I suppose I could talk to Athena,” the Frenchwoman admitted, “or Winston. To make sure it was allowed.”

Lena nodded, backing off. “So what do you feel like for dinner?”

Amélie recovered her aplomb, considering her options. “I do have some steak in the refrigerator.”

“That sounds nice,” Lena agreed, “want a hand with anything?”

Amélie offered a skeptical glance. “Can you make a salad without burning down my kitchen?”

Lena sighed. “I should _never_ have told you that story. It only happened the once!”

* * *

When Lena arrived at L’Enfer, she had to admit the ridiculous idea seemed to be working. The club wasn’t packed the way it might be on a busy Saturday night, but there was a bit larger crowd than she remembered from the night she’d come in to talk to Hana and the Russian a few months ago.

She noticed that the new DJ had set up with a fairly impressive set of turntables and equipment, including a silver frog head with glowing green eyes sitting on a table by where he stood, talking to a couple of people who must have been signing up to sing.

‘DJ Ribbithead.’ Hah. As Lena wandered over to check things out, she noticed an odd sheen to his dark skin, along with some subtle mottling along his bare arms that reminded Lena of _something_ , but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

To her surprise, as the folks around his tables cleared off, the DJ actually waved to her. “Hey, c’mon over!”

Lena did as he asked, and before she could say anything, the DJ was offering his hand with an easy smile. “Hi! Lena, right? I’m Lúcio. Or Ribbithead. Whatever works for you.”

Taking his hand, if his skin hadn’t already tipped Lena off that the taller man wasn’t human, the heartbeat certainly would have done the job. Compared to the steady beat she was used to in most this was almost a syncopation, odd enough to make her eyebrows raise. “Um, hi. You know who I am?”

Lúcio nodded, setting his thick black-and–bright-green dreads bouncing. “Yup. Got a talking to by Winston and Athena. They mentioned you’re a regular – pretty girl, pink hair, short, punk as hell, dating the bartender, vampire, I miss anything?”

Lena couldn’t help but laugh. “Right, ok, I guess that’s the package. You OK with that?”

“Hey, as long as you’re not biting me,” the DJ shrugged, “and the dating the bartender thing, that is all you. She’s cute but I tend not to go for tall, cool, and scary.”

Lena gave him a wounded look. “She’s not that bad, really.”

Lúcio grinned. “Naah, she’s cool – sorry, didn’t mean anything bad there.  We haven’t talked that much but she seems pretty OK. Athena likes her a lot, I can tell.”

Lena grimaced, rubbing the back of her head. “Yeah, she does. Winston, too. Amé’s a good one. So give her a little more credit, yeah?”.”

The DJ’s expression softened. “Yeah. Sorry, I see what you’re saying. Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.”

Lena did her best to relax and smile back. “I appreciate it. So…how many people do you have signed up to go on tonight?”

“Oh, a few,” Lúcio grinned, his mood lightening again, “but I’m not allowed to let you see the list tonight, sorry.”

“Not _allowed?_ ” Lena blinked, tilting her head slightly in confusion. “What’s that mean, then?”

“Means Winston told me you’re not allowed to see tonight,” the DJ failed to explain, “but don’t worry, you’ll figure it out when we get started in a couple minutes…”

Lena wandered back to the bar, and suddenly realized the other thing that had been subconsciously setting off bells in her head: _Am_ _é_ _lie wasn’t there._ Instead, Athena was minding one side of the bar, while one of the girls who worked Amélie’s off nights was putting a tray together for Hana.

She decided to go up to Athena to see if she could find out what was going on – Hana might know, but in her experience the fox women she’d met before also tended to enjoy keeping secrets even more than they liked learning them. Walking to her ‘usual spot’, she pulled her goggles down to rest around her neck and waited for the statuesque woman to come over.

“Hello, Lena. Dropping in for the karaoke night?”

“Yeah,” Lena confirmed, “but I was expecting Amé to be working. She mentioned she’d be working when she told me about it the other night.”

The oread grinned. “Oh, she’s…working on something special in the back.”

Lena frowned suspiciously. “Do you know, between that froggy bloke you hired not letting me see the list for tonight after calling me out and the way you’re acting, this is starting to feel like a bit of a trap.”

“Calling you out?” Athena actually looked a bit concerned, which was nice. “What do you mean?”

“He introduced himself by telling me he knew what I was and that Amé was my girlfriend.” Lena’s frown deepened, giving the taller woman a stern look. “I know I told you guys to keep her safe if I do something stupid, but do you mind giving me the benefit of the doubt? I’d rather my life and times not be part of the employee orientation.”

Athena looked away for a moment with an embarrassed frown, then nodded. “I apologize, Lena. There is a reason Lúcio was told about you, and I can explain later, but I didn’t expect him to do that.  I’ll speak to him about it later, if you like.”

“I think we worked it out,” Lena admitted, “but yeah, I would appreciate that – and the explanation.”

Athena nodded. “Aside from him, no one else knows except the people you have already spoken to. I’ll keep it that way from now on.”

“Thanks, luv.” Lena had been about to press the question of exactly why she couldn’t see or put herself on the Karaoke list, though she’d developed a pretty strong suspicion, when the club’s lights went down, a pair of small spots hitting the “stage” area where a mic was waiting.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Vampires, Werewolves, and all the other children of the night,” Lúcio’s voice boomed enthusiastically over the club’s speaker system, “welcome to Goth-e-oke!”

There was a decent cheer of approval from the crowd, and after a moment the DJ’s voice came back on. “We’ve got something special to start things off tonight! Please welcome our first performer, _the Nightingale!_ ”

Lena’s jaw dropped, and she vaguely registered Athena laughing softly behind her before the sounds of a keyboard intro grabbed her attention, followed by a vision strutting to the mic.

Amélie had taken her hair out of her usual ponytail, but instead of letting it fall against her back, she had teased it up into an impressive mane, dressed in chunky black boots, striped tights, a cascade of black tulle skirts, a white shirt with ruffled ascot, and a blood-red riding jacket. She’d taken the extra touch of applying a bit of makeup to make her pale skin shimmer in the light, with a swipe of black kohl over both of her eyes.

Lena felt such a physical pang of desire she actually covered her mouth for a moment to make sure her fangs hadn’t popped.

_Holy god my girl is gorgeous, and I am never getting away with telling her Siouxsie was punk ever again._

Somehow Lena wasn’t surprised Amé had locked onto her position like a missile as she smiled to the polite applause that had greeted her, her eyes making a connection that ran through Lena like an electric jolt, and then she was off, hitting her cue perfectly, her voice rich and warm, her French accent adding a whole new layer to the song.

 _You are the melting men, you are the situation_  
_There is no time to breathe, and yet one single breath  
Leads to an insatiable desire of suicide…in sex_

_So many blazing orchids burning in your throat  
Making you choke, making you sigh, sigh in tiny deaths_

_So melt!_  
_My lover, melt!_  
_She said melt!_  
_My lover, melt!_

_You are the melting men and as you melt  
you are beheaded handcuffed (in lace and blood and sperm)_

_Swimming in poison, gasping in the fragrances  
sweat carves a screenplay of discipline_ … _and devotion_

 _So melt!_  
_My lover, melt!_  
_She said melt!_  
_My lover, melt!_

 _Can you see?_  
_See into the back of a long, black car_  
_Pulling away from the funeral of flowers with my hand between your legs_  
_melting…_

 _So melt!_  
_My lover, melt!_  
_She said melt!_  
_My lover, melt!_

If Lena hadn’t known that Amélie had some professional training before, she’d have been dead certain after watching her perform. She had a commanding presence, hitting the notes and working the mic beautifully. Her seductive voice, knowing smile, and flashing eyes had the crowd hanging on each word. As she nailed the final chorus, her hand outstretched towards where her lover stood, fingers crooked up in a come hither gesture as the final notes died away, the place _exploded_ in whistles and cheers, and the part of Lena that wasn’t actively turning into a puddle of goo pitied whoever was following her up tonight.

Lena was absolutely rooted to the floor, fixed in place as her brain completely failed to fire, the crowd parting like the Red Sea to allow the bartender to make her way off the stage while Lúcio called up the next performer.

Amélie strode confidently back through the crowd as a barrel-chested man began to butcher his way through a Type O Negative song. When the bartender arrived to see her girlfriend still in shock, she gave a little smile before reaching out to lightly stroke the vampire’s chin. “Was that everything you hoped for, _ma ch_ _é_ _rie_?”

Lena’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before she finally began to regain the powers of speech again. “Ah…bwa. Guh, oh _god_ , yes.”

The bartender chuckled throatily and nodded to Athena, who handed her a bottle of water that she drained in two long pulls, making Lena’s eyes draw to that pale throat as it worked. She hadn’t even realized she was biting down on her lower lip until she felt a sudden sharp pain and tasted copper in her mouth.

“Lena,” Amélie tsk’d softly as she looked over, “you’re bleeding – and your eyes are changing.”

Lena blanched as she came back to reality. “Buggering shite!” Swearing at herself for her loss of control, she yanked her goggles back up to at least conceal _that_ until she could calm herself down a little, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath, feeling the cut she’d opened in her lip pulling itself back together. “Sorry, got…distracted there.”

Amélie slipped an arm around her, lightly kissing the top of her head. “Did I go a bit too far?”

“I’m not _complaining_ , you were amazing. I just…” Lena coughed. “Exactly how am I supposed to survive until you’re done working tonight?”

Amélie raised an eyebrow. “Am I working tonight, Athena?”

The bar’s manager’s voice was deliberately deadpan. “I don’t see you working, Amélie. As a matter of fact, I see Gena working the bar right now, and you know she always appreciates a few extra hours.”

“Then it seems I am not,” Amélie returned in an equally deadpan voice before laughing softly, her fingers settling along her lover’s back, “perhaps you’ll manage to live through tonight after all, _ma petite chou._ ”

Lena shivered, her arms wrapping around the taller woman’s waist. “I _knew_ I was getting set up tonight for something, but didn’t quite expect that.”

“Mm,” Amélie smiled before they came together in a quick kiss, “it seems you’ve walked straight into my web. So what shall I do with you?”

Lena grinned. “I can suggest a few things. Shall we discuss them back at my flat?”

Athena coughed behind them. “Lena, did you still want to discuss what we were talking about before things got started?”

Lena turned her head to look over at the bar manager, then back to Amélie’s face, noticing the subtle flush beneath her makeup and the other woman’s blown pupils. “Yeaaah, y’know what? It’ll keep. I’ll come in tomorrow, say, we can chat then.”

The oread sighed, but she was smiling as she raised a hand to shoo them away. “I see. Tomorrow, then. Please try not to break anything – or each other.”

Lena laughed as she slipped from the embrace and began gently tugging Amélie in the direction of the employees-only door so she could collect her things. “Actually, I can heal broken fingers pretty quickly!”

“Lena,” Athena sighed in an almost perfect imitation of Winston’s exasperated tones, “oversharing.”

The vampire and her lover were still laughing as they made their way into the night.

* * *

Amélie gasped as Lena’s kisses trailed down her neck, her nails scraping along the smaller woman’s shoulder as they sank into the bed.

“Beautiful,” Lena murmured as her lips danced along pale skin, “so beautiful, Amé…voice like a goddess…driving me out of my _mind._ ”

A shuddering moan escaped her lips as Lena’s hands moved down her body, her voice thick with desire as her hand tangled in bright pink hair. “I love seeing you like this…making you lose control…because of me, _ma douce_. Tell me…tell me how much you want me…”

“I want every last bit of you,” Lena gasped as Amélie tugged at her hair, “want to hear you sing for me…want to hear you cry…want to have you…want you to be _mine_ …”

Amélie shivered at her lover’s words, thrilling to every touch. “Then do it, _ma petite idiote_ … _fait moi tiens_... _ah!_ …”

They’d been happily engaged in bed for some time when Amélie looked up the length of her lover’s lean body and realized Lena’s eyes had changed to that rich red shade again, the vampire’s hands clenching the bedsheet in white knuckled fists. “You want more than just this, don’t you…?”

Lena nodded, shaking slightly, her mouth carefully kept shut.

Amélie dragged her thumb over what she’d learned was _very_ sensitive spot, and enjoyed the way Lena arched and mewled through her tightly clasped lips. “…and if I said yes?”

Lena’s eyes widened, her mouth opening just enough for Amélie to see the tips of her fangs peeking past her lip. “I _want…_ I would…if you said yes.”

Amélie considered it seriously for a long moment, then slid back up the bed until she was looking into those scarlet eyes. “Then… _yes._ ”

The first time, Lena had spent nearly a day and a half talking Amélie out of allowing her to feed, and it had been a gentle, sweet experience despite the vampire’s growing hunger.

This time was a less gentle experience, but still very enjoyable. One of Lena’s hands found purchase in her hair, while the other wrapped around her back, pressing their bodies together as Lena’s kisses slid down her neck before she bit down, and the Nightingale sang for her alone.

* * *

Once her lover had fed, Amélie had fallen into a nap with Lena leaving gentle kisses along her neck, the vampire’s deft fingers lightly caressing her back. When Amélie’s eyes opened again, the clock on the nightstand showed just past one in the morning – normally she’d just be hitting her second wind if this had been a regular work night, and despite their earlier exercise and the blood loss, she didn’t feel a real urge to go back to sleep.

Lena had curled up for a nap of her own, it seemed, one arm draped over her, lips turned in a peaceful smile. Amélie lightly kissed her forehead, drawing a soft, happy murmur, then carefully disengaged herself, padding to the bathroom to tend to her fresh wound and make use of the toilet.

She’d been making herself a small snack from some of the food she’d begun to keep in Lena’s kitchen when she felt Lena’s arms wrap around her bare waist, the shorter woman’s body pressing to her back.

“You are making a PB&J, and making it look _sexy_. How on earth do you manage that?”

Amélie rolled her eyes. “The fact that we’re both naked, perhaps?”

“Naah,” Lena objected, “it’s something with the way you’re dragging the knife over the bread. I don’t even know…”

The Frenchwoman snorted, then picked up her plate and a glass of water, Lena slipping back to let her walk to the couch.

She’d nearly finished the sandwich when Lena spoke again with teasing grin. “So, how many people in the club tonight do you think realized they like girls tonight after your song?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Amélie breezed as she put her empty plate on the coffee table, “but now I am wondering when _you_ knew.”

Lena smirked. “Oh, I’m pretty sure I realized I liked you after we started kissing.”

Amélie grabbed the throw pillow and tossed it at her lover, who batted it down with a laugh. “OK, ok…sorry! Couldn’t resist the easy line.”

Lena settled back into the couch, then looked up towards the ceiling, her eyes suddenly far, far away. A look that reminded her just how old the vampire truly was, no matter how Lena tended to act. “My very first…that came back before I turned, actually.” Lena smiled wistfully as Amélie straightened slightly, her interest piqued.

“I was a scullery maid, when I first went to work. The youngest cook’s maid was a Scots girl, Emily. A smile that stopped me in my tracks, freckles all over, and hair like a blazing torch. Absolutely beautiful.”

“She sounds lovely,” Amélie agreed, “did you…?”

Lena shook her head. “It wasn’t something you could talk about, back then. I think she would have, if I’d asked, but no. By the time I had the courage, she’d taken a job in another house. I thought of trying to find her, after, but…” Lena shrugged. “For a while, I was just too scared of it all.”

“Well,” Amélie smiled, “I am glad you conquered that fear.” Suddenly something occurred to her. “Scullery maid.”

Lena looked over, her expression puzzled. “Yeah?”

“…I have _seen_ your housekeeping. That was your _profession?_ ”

Lena crossed her arms over her chest with a grumble. “Didn’t say I was a _good_ one…” After they’d both finished laughing, Lena sat back up, her eyes dancing. “So, I told you mine. Let me hear yours?”

Amélie nodded, smiling a bit wistfully. “It’s only fair. Before my parents decided I hurt myself too easily dancing, there was a girl in my ballet class. Marielle. She moved so beautifully… I was too young to really understand why, but when she danced I could never look away."

Lena smiled back. “That’s lovely. So…how do I move?”

Amélie considered that seriously, thinking of the way she’d seen her lover dance, her walk, her tendency to rock or bob in place on the rare occasions she stood still. “Graceful is not the right word. You are complex. At times you are a constant motion – a hummingbird flitting around a room. But in others I see you wait patiently, coiled like a spring until you are ready to move. I suppose if you are a predator, those are the moments where you act the huntress.”

Lena smiled shyly, an actual blush appearing on her cheeks. “That was beautiful, Amé. I was expecting you to call me a squirrel or something.”

She shook her head, then reached out to pull Lena to her, cuddling together and trading a gentle kiss. “ _Ma petite idiote._ ”

Lena snorted. “I shouldn’t love hearing you call me that so much.”

Amélie just smiled, making a happy little hum as their arms wrapped around each other.

“Want to watch something on Netflix before we go back to bed?”

 _"Bien s_ _û_ _r._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on chapters here! Holidays and illnesses put a hurting on a lot of stuff, but we're getting back on track.
> 
> In case it's not obvious, the song being performed was [Melt!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXgQ3TJJZVQ) by Siouxsie & The Banshees. 
> 
> Marita has been putting up more character art at [her tumblr](three-legged-cow.tumblr.com) or you can check the [Candyfloss and Lace tag!](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/candyfloss-and-lace)


	10. I (never) Wanna Be Your Dog

**(212) 869 – 8267**

_11:45_

Hi Athena, it’s Lena!

Stole your number off Amé’s phone.

_Oh, hello Lena._

_I was wondering how you got this number._

Yeah, sorry, not trying to be too sneaky. :D

I was wondering if we could finish that conversation from the other night?

_Of course. Come to the club, I’ll let you in. We can discuss things with Winston in his office?_

OK, sounds brilliant.

Any problem if I come over now?

_That’s fine._

* * *

Winston stood, offering a wave as Athena lead Lena into his office. “Good afternoon, Lena. I heard you enjoyed yourself last night?”

Lena coughed, giving the sasquatch a faintly embarrassed look. “You could say that, _yeah_ …not letting me know Amé was performing was a little bit of a trick, though.”

Chuckling, the furry club owner settled back down in his chair. “Sorry, you’re right, but when she asked if it was all right for her to perform, Athena and I both thought it would be fun to make it into a surprise for you.” He paused, looking over to the oread in some silent communication. “That said…I understand there was a bit of an issue beforehand, and I wanted to apologize for that.”

Lena shrugged. “We – Athena and I, I mean, talked a little about it. Lúcio apologized for putting his foot in a bit, too…but I really do want to know why he needed to know.”

Winston nodded, leaning back in his chair and tapping his fingers together for a moment. “I don’t know if you remember or not, but back when you first came to talk to us about the night you and Amélie…ah…hit it off, I mentioned I was going to make a few calls about things we might be able to use to help keep her safe, if there was a problem?”

The vampire considered that, her eyes closing as she tried to think back. “OK, yeah, now that you mention it, I do.”

“Lúcio was one of those calls,” Athena picked up the explanation, “because he’s got some unique talents beyond his DJ work.”

Lena raised an eyebrow. “Such as…?”

Athena smiled a bit grimly. “He’s a siren.”

“ _What?_ ” Lena straightened, her eyes widening. “Excuse me, you gave me how much lip because you were afraid I might have hypnotized someone – which I _still_ can’t do, by the by – and then you hired a bloody _siren_?”

Winston raised a hand. “There are conditions to his employment – first and foremost that he will not sing unless there’s an issue that demands it.”

“I should fucking hope so!” Lena shivered at the idea of what a siren’s hypnotic call could do if unleashed in the confines of the club, then blinked as she considered something beyond the DJ’s hidden talents. “Wait. Aren’t sirens typically…well…female?”

Athena shrugged. “I asked once. All he would say was his father wasn’t human, either. Given his show motif and the way he looks…maybe some kind of frog-Mer? But I assure you, he’s a real siren.”

“That sounds like experience,” Lena looked over with interest, “you’ve heard him?”

Athena rapped a knuckle against Winston’s desk with the hard clacking sound of stone on metal. “A siren’s song doesn’t affect my kind. But I know one when I hear it. Call it a family legacy.”

“Huh.” Lena considered that, then nodded. “So any idea if he would affect me, then, if it came to that?”

“We’re not sure,” Winston admitted, “but he’d certainly affect Amélie. So if he sang her to sleep, for example, Athena could get her upstairs and lock her in the office until things were dealt with.”

Lena nodded. “Fair enough, I suppose…” Sighing, she looked over at Athena. “So, he’s in the loop, then. Any other surprises, before I stumble into them?”

“No, I promise, that’s it.” Athena at least had the grace to look embarrassed. “You haven’t given us any reason to be that worried, anyway. I kept watching and waiting for the worst…but you’ve been good for her. We’ve all noticed that. I’m sorry about how I treated you, at first. You didn’t deserve it.”

Lena shrugged. “You didn’t do anything I haven’t done to myself. I spent a lot of time being scared of…well, of myself, really, and Amé just kept pulling my head out of my arse.”

Athena smiled. “She’s got a talent for that.”

Winston leaned forward on his elbows. “That said…Lena, I’ve known you for a long time. I've never seen you hurt _anyone_. Especially not someone you considered a friend. I respect you wanting to keep Amélie safe – and us, for that matter. But it’s been, what, more than six months? No sign of you having any problems that entire time. Maybe you ought to trust yourself a little more.”

The vampire thought about that for a long moment. “You know, you’re not the first person to tell me that since this all started.”

Winston raised an eyebrow. “And…?”

Lena smiled back. “Maybe I really ought to start listening.”

* * *

Amélie was thankful she’d moved a significant portion of her closet over to Lena’s flat. She loved the outfit she’d put together for performing last night, but it wasn’t really appropriate for going to buy groceries.

In some ways it didn’t make a lot of sense for her to buy groceries for both apartments, or to keep wardrobes at both apartments, but it meant a great deal to have the independence of a place that was hers, and hers alone, even if she _chose_ to share it with Lena.

Lena had offered that if a unit opened up in her building, she was welcome to take it, but she wasn’t sure about taking her up on that. It wouldn’t be the same as moving in with her directly, but it was still Lena’s building, and she was likely to do something ridiculously romantic like draw up a lease that only required her to pay a dollar for rent.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love Lena – she did, very much. What had begun as a curiosity had quickly deepened, and in some ways it shocked her just how hard she’d fallen for the little idiot. More than that – she _trusted_ her, and after everything she’d been through with Gérard, that was not something she gave lightly.

But she’d had to fight so hard to make a life that was _hers_. In some ways it felt like surrendering part of that again.

She sighed as she pushed her cart to the check-out line. She ought to talk to someone about this. Perhaps an outside perspective?

Hana wasn’t exactly the right one to ask. Athena? Obvious – but biased.

Aleksandra? They didn’t talk often, but she had a feeling the taciturn Russian would understand the need for establishing and maintaining her own boundaries. She made a mental note to make the time to speak with her outside before going in to get ready for work. Perhaps they could meet for lunch tomorrow. She knew that Lena would not mind her making plans…

She’d finished paying for the groceries on automatic, collecting her shopping bags from the end of the line, when a thought hit her like a flashbulb.

_Lena would not mind._

Lena didn’t get angry when she made plans without her.

Lena didn’t mind her taking care of her own errands without giving her an itinerary.

Lena didn’t ask to see receipts when she bought things – she did offer to give some money to help with the groceries Amélie kept in her kitchen, but never demanded they itemize it. Just asked how much had been spent and would hand over cash, or offer to pick something up in kind.

Lena would not be upset if she mentioned going to have coffee or lunch with a friend with little notice.

Lena trusted _her_ , too.

It was such a simple, obvious thing, but it almost made her stop in her tracks.

_Lena trusts you._

She was smiling the entire way to the subway, and through the entire walk back to her building.

* * *

**LENA**

_14:31_

Hi love!

I’m meeting Angie for tea and picking up ‘lunches.’

Meet you at the club once you’re on the clock?

_That sounds like a plan. Please tell l’ange hello._

_I bought more groceries for your flat._

_We should stop at my building after work so I can pick them up from my place._

Righto! See you soon.

 

 _J’taime._

Love you Amé.

* * *

After putting her own groceries away and leaving a bag in her refrigerator to take over to Lena’s apartment later, Amélie examined her options for what to wear into the club for the Friday Night crowd.

She needed to do laundry, but there were a few options. She didn’t want to wear anything too close to the outfit she’d worn to sing last night, but snug black pants, a crisp white shirt, and a black jacket with pseudo-military gold epaulets on the shoulders would work nicely, combined with a black necktie and her hair up in her normal style.

A few minutes to apply makeup, and she was on her way out the door with plenty of time to stop and get a bit of lunch before taking the train in for work.

It was an excellent plan.

It did not survive more than a few steps from her building’s front door.

“Ahh, what a wonderful accident!”

Gérard’s cheerful voice made her skin crawl. How was he _here_? He wasn’t supposed to know where she lived. She had their legal correspondence delivered to a post office box for just that reason.

Turning to face him, the smile that had been on her lips died, replaced with a variation on the cool mask she wore.

“I suspect this was no accident at all, Gérard. How did you know where I live? Have you been following me?”

Her ex-husband smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I have no idea what you mean, Amé. I was just out taking care of a few things, looking at a few buildings, and how lucky I was to run into you?”

A wave of disgust roiled in her stomach, and she seized it, letting it fuel her anger. “This was not _lucky_ , and it was not an _accident_. Stop acting like I am a child. I have no interest in these games. What do you _want?_ ”

Gérard laughed, as if this was all a wonderful joke. “To talk to you, of course.”

She took a deep breath, nostrils flaring. “And if I said no?”

 _“_ You know I’m persistent, _ma petite rossignol._ ” Gérard gestured to a café a few buildings away. “Please. A coffee with me, let me talk to you for a few minutes, and your stop for the train will be just a few minutes away. Let me finish the discussion that was interrupted the last time I visited you here.”

Amélie scowled. “If you went to the trouble of finding where I live, you have to know I am dating someone else. The same one who nearly knocked you on your back that night. I will call her if you do not leave me alone. She will not be pleased.”

“I’ve no idea what you see in her,” he admitted with a shrug, “but there’s no need for that. Give me five minutes. Please. I’m flying back to France in a few days, and I will not be back for some time. I want to…I would like to close the book. _S’il vous plait._ ”

She counted to ten before finally sighing and gesturing to the café. “Fine. Five minutes, but after that, I never want to see you here again, _c’est clair_?”

“If that is truly how you feel after we are done, then that will be it.”

She let him lead her to the café, but refused his offer to buy her drink, purchasing a coffee separately in an effort to drive home the point. _I am not yours anymore, and I will never owe you anything again_.

Following him to a table, she took a drink of her coffee and waited for him to speak. She knew it wouldn’t take long.

“Thank you for doing this, Amé. I…you know I have never stopped loving you. You meant the world to me, and I made a terrible mistake. It was wrong for me to think anyone else could give me what I was missing, when the problem wasn’t you – it was _me_.”

The coffee she’d drunk felt like cold lead in her stomach. Was he back to this again? Pledging his love for her and promising he was going to be better this time? Perhaps the worst part was he sounded so sincere about it all, yet how often had he sounded just like this before she had left him? When he insisted there was no one else even while he made his way into another woman’s bed?

He’d continued to go on, but she’d stopped listening, and at the first break in his one-sided conversation, she held up her hand.

“ _Ç_ _a suffit._ Gérard, I have nothing more to say to you. Please, stop this. Go back to Los Angeles, or Paris, or wherever you have been. I do not care. I do not wish to come back to you. I do not _want_ you.” Amélie stood, but he reached for her hand, taking it with a surprisingly gentle grip before she could walk away and leave the café.

“Just answer me one question, and if you truly never wish to see me again afterward,” Gérard promised, “you will be rid of me.”

Amélie clenched her free hand, the knuckles turning almost as white as the bones beneath her skin. She considered giving him his question, but the part of her that had been growing stronger since their divorce – boosted by the genuine affection and love she’d received from Lena – snarled inside of her that Gérard had made promises like that many times before, and broken each and every one.

“You have said more than enough,” she snapped, twisting her hand free before turning to head for the door, “ _au revoir, Gérard, et dégage_!”

She’d nearly reached the door when she heard Gérard’s voice call out to her: “Amélie! _Why do you hate what you are?_ ”

* * *

  **Athena**

_16:45_

_I am very sorry for the short notice, but I will not be able to work tonight._

_Something I had at lunch has disagreed with me. Badly._

I’m sorry to hear that, Amélie. I’ll call Gena right now.

Was Lena coming in tonight?

Do you need me to let her know?

_I’ll let her know. Merci beacoup._


	11. Songs of a Caged Bird

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains abduction, mention of being drugged, and an interrogation. Please avoid if this will be an issue for you.

Amélie was a few feet from the door of the café, stopped in her tracks as if she had been shot as Gérard repeated his question:

“Why do you hate what you are?”

Amélie was so shocked and angered by what Gérard had asked that she dropped instinctively into French.

<<Excuse me?>>

Gérard did the same without missing a beat. <<You work with them. You dine with them. You dress like them. God, you _smell_ like them! But you aren’t. You are human. You are so much _more_ than any of them could ever hope to be. Why lower yourself to their level? Why turn against your own kind? >>

Amélie felt her face go red with anger, her stomach churning with disgust that she channeled into fuel for her reply. <<You have no idea what you’re talking about, Gérard.>>

<<I think I do,>> he countered smoothly, his voice almost shockingly calm. <<Look at us, Amé. What we do – what _we_ are! Man built the pyramids. Forged empires. Spanned the oceans. What are _they_? Scavengers. Parasites. Filth that hides in our shadows and steals from our labor. >>

Amélie’s eyes widened. << You’re one of them. The people who have been attacking cryptids. The ones being investigated. >>

Gérard smiled. <<Ahh, you’ve heard? Interesting. But yes, I _am_ here because of Saint George, and our holy work. >>

 _Saint George._ She’d heard of the hate group (who called themselves ‘human advocates’, of course) before. She had no idea Gérard might feel that way. He had never seemed to care for most cryptids, but that had seemed to be more of a passive distaste, not such active hatred.

<<They saved me, Amé. Showed me why I was falling so far. I’d lost you, lost my job, was well on my way to drinking myself to death. They took me in, showed me how I’d let myself become weak, and they helped me learn to stand again. To be a _man_ again. >>

She wanted to object, but Gérard barreled on, not allowing a word in edgewise. <<I wanted to show you, before. The night at that filthy hole you work in, when that little parasite interrupted us.>> He’d crossed the distance to her as he spoke, trying to take her hand, and Amélie snatched it away, ignoring the slightly hurt look in her ex-husband’s eyes. His voice turned quietly disappointed, like a parent scolding a wayward child. <<I wanted to take you back to our home, sit you down, and explain what I had learned. We could be a family again, Amélie, a _real_ family. A better one. I could give you so much more than I ever could before. Please, come back with me. There is nothing for you here. >>

Amélie’s lip curled in a sneer. <<All you learned was how to become an even more disgusting piece of filth. I wouldn’t have gone home with you that night. I would rather eat glass than go home with you now.>>

Gérard shook his head, his eyes sad rather than filled with the anger she expected. <<You were so beautiful before, Amélie. I believe you can be saved. Some of my brothers and sisters were even further gone than you. Please, come with me tonight. Listen to what I have to say, and you’ll see the light. This is _our_ world, my love. We are taking it back. >>

Amélie raised her left hand, showing him her bare finger, devoid of the ring she’d worn for far too long.

<<I am not your _anything_ ,>> she spat. <<You never saw me as anything but a trophy. A toy. Never again.>> Her arm drew back to slap him, but his hand caught her wrist in a surprisingly strong grip before she could connect.

<<You’re a lousy liar, my nightingale. You always have been. I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t think I have to. Please, just make the right choice tonight.>>

Amélie scoffed. <<You call it a choice. To go with you? To abandon my home? My job? My friends? My loved ones?>> His grip was still tight on her arm, but her other hand was still free…

Gérard’s eyes flashed with that same dangerous intensity he’d had back on the night where she’d been rescued by Lena, his voice dripping with contempt and a terrible finality. <<Your ‘friends’ won’t be there much longer – nor will your job, I assure you.>>

Amélie stared in horror as the blood drained from her face. <<What have you done?>>

Gérard laughed coldly as he switched back to English. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

Something metal touched her back, and she heard an electric snapping sound as her entire body convulsed with pain, collapsing to the floor as her knees gave way.

The last thing she saw before the world went black was Gérard scooping up her purse, then pulling out her phone and keys. “Go take care of things in her flat while I take my wife home, would you?”

* * *

Lena was confused when she arrived at L’Enfer to find Athena behind the bar, and the woman who had subbed for Amélie the other night mixing a drink.

“Hullo…what’s this, then?” She grinned as she waved to the statuesque woman. “Am I being set up again?”

Athena blinked, confused. “No, didn’t Amélie get ahold of you?”

Lena cocked her head. “About what?”

“She sent me a text,” the oread explained, “a couple of hours ago. Said something she had eaten for lunch made her sick. I asked if she wanted me to tell you when you came in. She replied that she was going to take care of that.”

“Oh, poor thing.” Lena checked her phone, then shook her head. “Nothing – but depending on how she was feeling, she might have gone to lie down and then fallen asleep.” She chewed against the bottom of her lip, thoughtful. “It must have come on fast – she texted me earlier saying she was picking up groceries. I’ll have to ask what she ate.”

Athena shrugged. “Maybe. Do you think you’ll go check up on her?”

“Mm.” Lena tapped her phone against the side of her leg for a moment as she considered that. “You know…I want to? But if she’s resting, it’s just as well to let her rest. She’ll wake up and call me, I’m sure.”

* * *

Amélie felt a pinching sensation in her arm, the pain helping to bring her back to awareness. Her head felt foggy…it was like she’d been woken from a long nap. Where was she…? She’d been talking to Gérard and he’d said something. She remembered being upset. Then…

She shook her head, trying to clear it, but it wasn’t helping.

“Ahh, hello, I see you’re waking up.”

A man’s voice. Unfamiliar. Where _was_ she?

Her eyelids felt heavy, but they slowly opened, revealing what looked like a small study or office. Old books lining one wall. She was resting on some kind of couch, and a man sat nearby at an antique looking wooden desk.

He had a grandfatherly look to him, dressed in dark slacks and a charcoal sweater over a white shirt, with hazel eyes and greying hair. “Hello, my dear. How are you feeling?”

“Very tired,” Amélie admitted, “sleepy…odd.”

“Mm.” The older man smiled kindly at her. “You weren’t well, I’m afraid. We brought you to my office so you could rest.”

“Oh.” Amélie blinked in surprise. _Did_ she know this man? “Thank you.” English was…difficult. He was right that she didn’t feel so well. Everything felt a bit…scattered.  <<I am sorry, but do I know you?>>

Thankfully, her host didn’t seem to mind. <<My name is Father Pascal – Pascal Talon. We’ve met once before, but you may not recall.>>

Something in his accent wasn’t quite right. Not American, not French. Confusing. <<Are you…where are you from? I can’t place it.>>

Pascal chuckled. <<A little town in Québec, that most people have never heard of. But I met you once when Gérard brought you to my church here in New York for Easter mass.>>

Oh, that explained why it was so odd. The Québécois didn’t _actually_ speak French anyway. Amélie tried to sit up, putting a hand to her forehead.  <<Forgive me, I don’t remember. I’m very dizzy…do you have a wastebin?>>

The priest brought a black plastic trash can over, setting in easy reach. <<Of course, of course. No need to apologize, it was quite some time ago. I was very sorry to hear about what happened, you know. It was a shame and a sin that Gérard strayed.>>

<<Thank you.>> She didn’t quite need to vomit, thankfully, but she put a hand on the rim of the basket, just in case. <<It…I think it was for the best, in the end. Gérard loved _having_ me. Not actually _loving_ me. I’ve learned there is a difference. >>

Pascal brought his chair over, sitting a little closer to her. <<There certainly is. I’ve heard you had someone new in your life. I’m very happy for you.>>

Amélie smiled. <<She has been wonderful. I never would have expected…she is so much more than I ever imagined, before we began to date. I always thought Lena was just something of a flirt and a…can you still call someone a Don Juan if she is a woman?>> She suddenly realized who she was talking to, and flushed with embarrassment. <<I’m sorry, I know that some…that you may not approve of two women being…>>

<<Together?>> The priest waved his hand away. <<The Holy City has their opinions, my dear, and I have mine. It sounds like your Lena is very special.>>

She felt a rush of relief so powerful it almost made her want to fall back over on the couch. She settled for resting her head back against the cushions. <<She is. So very, very special…she’s my little idiot. Almost three hundred years old and she still looked at me…looks at me…like I’m something so beautiful. I think I surprise her even more than she surprised me, that first night.>> Amélie giggled suddenly, remembering that first night. <<It was so cute to see her startled. I should have been scared of her fangs but…she was just so _cute_. Am I making any sense? I don’t feel like I am making any sense. >>

Pascal laughed, putting a warm hand over hers. <<Oh, my dear, you make perfect sense – you’re very clearly in love. It’s adorable. But she is _three hundred_ years old? How on earth…? >>

<<Oh,>> Amélie waved a hand, <<she is a vampire. I suppose I shouldn’t tell you that. It’s sort of a secret. I mean, Winston and Athena and Hana and Aleks and that new one all know, but I shouldn’t out someone like that! It’s so rude!>>

<<How remarkable!>> Pascal smiled, squeezing her hand lightly. <<Our little secret, my dear. This isn’t confession, but don’t worry, I will keep this all in confidence. I have to ask, is it like the movies? Does she really drink blood?>>

<<She does. She does drink blood!>> Amélie admitted, and without really thinking about it, she reached out to unknot the choker from her neck, revealing the still healing punctures at her throat. <<The rest isn’t really like the movies, though. She was telling us that once…>>

Something odd flashed in the priest’s eyes when he looked at the wound, and the fading bruise from the hickey at her throat that she’d also been concealing, but his smile never wavered, and the look was gone before she could really put a name to it. <<How interesting. So what _is_ it like, if not like the movies?>>

She giggled again, almost despite herself. <<She’s very strong – she picked me up and carried me to bed! I’m a more than ten centimeters taller! She can run and jump…what did she call herself…the ‘Apex Predator’? Is that right? I think it’s right. She can see very well in the dark, and she told me that she…she hears our heartbeats. It helps her hunt. When she was trying to make sure she only asked nonhumans for permission, it’s how she found…I confused her. My heart is odd. It’s always been odd. My parents took me to so many doctors after we found out, but they put me on the right medicine and it’s never been a problem since. But she doesn’t see anything wrong…she trusts me…why am I telling you this?>>

The priest chuckled. <<I have one of those kind of faces. All part of my calling. I’m so happy she trusts you. That’s so important to a good relationship, isn’t it?>>

Tears had started to sting at Amélie’s eyes. <<It is, it is. She was so scared at first, you know. I knew she wouldn’t hurt me, but she didn’t believe in herself. She kept…she kept being so _kind_ but she kept worrying…she told Aleks such terrible things to do if she ever lost control of herself. >>

<<What kind of things?>> Pascal’s brows knit, and he seemed more interested, leaning forward slightly. <<That doesn’t seem like the way someone who you trust should treat herself.>>

<<She had a friend,>> Amélie tried to explain, <<and he got…he was an addict, I suppose. He got…obsessed.  It scared her. She didn’t ever want to hurt me that way. So she told Aleks to break her bones, to knock her out…she told her ‘If you ever had a flamethrower around, I’d have a really bad day.’ Told her to hit her with a tazer, too…I was so angry at her. She didn’t need to go so overboard. Winston had a much better idea…>>

Pascal raised an eyebrow. <<Oh? Who is Winston?>>

Amélie waved towards the ceiling. Why were her arms so _heavy?_ <<My boss. Well. Athena is my boss but Winston is The Boss. I think they date. They act like they date. Athena is always the front line but he will come out of the office if it’s serious. They work very well…>>

<<Oh,>> the priest nodded, <<I see. Well, what was his better idea?>>

<<He hired a DJ…he can…>> she gestured again, <<Winston said he can make people sleep? I don’t understand how. But he said if Lena was causing a problem – which isn’t going to happen, _honestly_ she’s so much better than that – he would ask Lúcio to put us all to sleep and Athena would take me to where I would be safe. >>

<<That seems much better than a flamethrower,>> Pascal agreed with a laugh, <<safer inside too!>>

Amélie nodded a bit too enthusiastically and her head swam. She put her hands to the sides of her head and groaned as the room spun. <<What is _wrong_ with me…? >>

Pascal shrugged as he switched back to English. “I believe we gave you a bit too much of the anesthetic – perhaps you are having a reaction. I’m not a doctor, I’m afraid. I will ask one to come see you after I speak with Gérard.”

Amélie stared at him, trying to focus. <<I don’t understand…>>

“It’s all right, my dear.” He gently patted her hand again. “You have been very helpful, you know. I have conducted interviews like this with others who have been drugged, but you never know quite how they will react to the scopolamine. Can you believe they originally created this to help women with their monthly pains? Remarkable stuff, really.”

<<Interview… _drugged_? >> Amélie tried to stand, but her legs were like a strange mix of lead and jelly, and all she accomplished was to fall to the carpet, knocking the wastebin over. <<Lena…are you…you want to hurt _Lena?_ I won’t…I can’t…>>

“Oh,” Pascal said gently, “I hope it won’t come to that, actually. Not when you’ve given us so much information on how we might be able to make her more…compliant. She could be so useful in helping us finding the ones hiding in plain sight.”

Tears filled her eyes as she tried to push herself back up onto her hands and knees, but it was no good. “No, no, no, no, _non, non, non!_ ”

“Shh.” The older man took her by the shoulders, still moving with an almost grandfatherly kindness, and pulled her back onto the couch. “Shh. Close your eyes and sleep, my dear. Sleep and this will be over soon. Most don’t even remember anything they said while under the influence. Sleep and we will talk later.”

She wanted to scream and kick and _get out of here_ , but she felt another pinch, and when she looked down, there was a needle sticking into her arm, Pascal plunging another dose of medicine into her vein before everything went dark again. 

* * *

  _ **LENA**_

_22:41_

_Bonjour, mon amour_

Hey, you!

I came to the club and Athena let me know you took sick?

You should have called.

 

_Désolée._

_I had something from that new café by my place and it didn’t agree with me at all._

_Once I was done in the toilet I just wanted to lie down and close my eyes._

Told you they seemed dodgy. :(

How are you doing now?

 

_Better, but still a bit off._

_I didn’t get any soup at the store. Could you pick up something, chérie?_

 

Of course, love.

Let me hit the deli over on Atlantic.

Matzoh ball soup, some crackers, and maybe some herbal tea?

I’ll grab some stuff we can watch, too. Sit you up on the couch, wrap you in blankets and cuddle you better. :)

 

_I can’t think of anything I’d like more._

* * *

Lena fished for her keys as she tried to balance the large container of soup, a couple of DVDs, and the shopping bag filled with tea, crackers, and over the counter stomach medicine (she hadn’t asked, but just in case), without sending the whole thing toppling to the ground.

“Haaaa-hah! Got you!” Triumphantly bringing the jingling keychain out of her pants, she twisted it around in her fingertips until she had the copy of Amélie’s key out, quickly unlocking the door and pushing it open with her foot so she wouldn’t drop anything.

“Amé? I’m here, luv! Got the stuff and a few extra things for you.”

She’d made it four, perhaps five steps into the apartment when she had a sudden awareness of a person behind her – but it was not the heartbeat she expected.

She’d just begun to turn when a pair of taser wires struck her in the back.

She’d never _been_ electrocuted in her long life as a vampire, but her theory that the taser would affect her just as much as another was proved – unfortunately – correct as her entire body went into spasms, sending the soup and her other burdens crashing to the floor, the soup container popping open and filling her nose with the rich aromas of the seasoned broth as it spilled across the floor.

It felt like her entire body was on fire but, at the same time, disconnected from the rest of her, moving and jerking with no input from her, and it was about the worst thing she could remember experiencing.

Well. Second worst.

Because the worst thing she realized before she lost consciousness was that whoever had done this must have taken Amélie.


	12. I (don't) Wanna Be Sedated

**Lena Oxton**

_14:10_

Hi, Athena!

Just wanted to let you know Amélie’s still not doing so great.

 

_I’m sorry to hear that, Lena._

_Has she seen a doctor?_

If she hasn’t perked up by tonight I think that’s the plan.

 

_I see. Please tell her we hope she’s feeling better soon?_

Thanks, Athena! Will do!

* * *

When Lena woke, she was in pain.

Her muscles ached from the spasms she’d suffered, but it was more than that. Someone had been kind enough to throw her a beating while she’d been out, leaving her bruised and battered.

Cold metal was around her wrists – cuffs of some kind – and when she tried to move, there was a rattle – some kind of chains.

She opened her eyes, then shut them again almost as quickly at the much-too-bright lighting. “ _Bugger_.”  She tried to reach up for her goggles…gone. Damn.

Closing her eyes, she concentrated on trying to heal herself. If she hadn’t fed so recently, this would be playing with fire, but she didn’t really have a lot of choices.

She could feel a little gnaw of hunger in the back of her mind, but she could control it for now. The more important thing was to find out where she was and what the _hell_ was going on.

Dragging herself onto hands and knees, she opened her eyes again – still a bit painful, but she could manage as long as she didn’t look directly into the fixtures. Boots gone, still had her shirt and jeans but the pockets were empty.  “Well, I suppose _that_ could be worse.”

Concrete floor. Bare walls except for the heavy eyebolts set into the back – and yup, those sure were heavy gauge chains running to the manacles padlocked over her forearms.

“Someone’s been to Home Depot _and_ the sex shops. Busy lads.” Talking to herself wasn’t _great_ , but hey, it beat just sitting there like a lump.

After a few minutes of testing the chains, she found she had enough slack to stand and come within about two feet of the heavy metal door. At the back wall, the concrete floor appeared to have been poured around the bolts that anchored her – she might be able to work one loose, but it would take time.

She was strong, but she wasn’t Superman. Still, as she looked down at her hands, that did give her an idea. If the steel the manacles had been made from was milder than the chain or the padlock, she might be able to break things that way. It would still take time, but it would probably be easier than ripping up the floor. Less obvious, too – she hoped.

Crouching on the floor of her cell, she crossed her hands and began to play with the padlock as if testing it, twisting it back and forth against the loop that held it in place.

* * *

When Amélie woke, her head was pounding and she had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. It was like the worst hangover she’d ever experienced – exactly _why_ she rarely drank to excess…

Something had happened – something she knew was very, very wrong – but she couldn’t remember anything. Snatches of a man’s voice…had she been answering questions?

Her eyes felt as if they’d been filled with sand, her mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton, and her throat was desperately parched.

She felt as if she’d been running from something, or perhaps someone?

She tried to think about what had happened and then it hit her like a freight train, sending her heart rate shooting up as panic gripped her.

_Gérard – the priest – LENA!_

She tried to sit upright and suddenly realized she couldn’t move her left arm – she blinked her eyes until they cleared, and saw a thick leather cuff around her wrist – the kind they used in hospitals…was she in a _hospital_ bed?

No, that wasn’t right. This looked like a bedroom – she looked around and she could see pictures on the walls, a dresser…

She tried to calm herself down but it felt like every part of herself was telling her to _run_ , right now, _as fast as she could_. Every breath seemed to bring another wave of panic and nausea, and she finally emptied her stomach into a bucket that she found resting next to the bed, just inside of her reach.

A few minutes later, her mouth tasted of bile, but her head had cleared, and the panic slowly eased.

This _was_ a bedroom, she realized. An apartment, perhaps? She looked out the window next to the bed and couldn’t quite believe what she saw.

_Could whoever put me in here have been so stupid as to put me in a room next to the fire escape?_

Yes, apparently – and with a window that could be pushed open…if she could get her arm free.

She looked down at the leather cuff, and the strap that lead beneath the bed. There was a lock on one side…a real hospital would have some kind of release, wouldn’t it?

She could try to move around the bed and find it, but how much time did she really have? Someone had probably heard her vomit.

Her fragmented memory wasn’t helping, but…Lena was in danger. They wanted to take Lena. She remembered that.

She might already be too late.

Amélie looked down at the cuff and her wrist, her voice hushed. “I haven’t done this since I was a girl…I hope I still can.”

She grabbed the pillow off the bed with her free hand and bit down on it, then reached down and wrapped her fingers around her bound hand, pulling against it as she rotated her shoulder back, twisting her body as sharply as she could.

Her cry of pain was muffled by the pillow, thankfully, and she felt the _pop_ as her wrist dislocated.

Grabbing the cuff in her uninjured hand, she held it still as she worked herself free, her eyes watering with tears, then wrapped her wrist as best as she could with the pillowcase.

The squeak as she unlocked and opened the window seemed impossibly loud, but no one came through the door. The metal of the fire escape’s grating was cold and wet against her feet, but it gave her something else to think about aside from her aching wrist.

Somehow, putting the drop ladder down didn’t draw more attention – she’d thank heaven for small favors.

She had no money, no phone, and no shoes. Her head was still pounding and her wrist would need treatment…but she was free.

If she was lucky, she could find someone to give her a ride to the Mt. Sinai ER.

* * *

_Some talk of Alexander, and some of Hercules_  
_Of Hector and Lysander, and such great names as these._  
_But of all the world’s great heroes, there’s none that can compare.  
_ _With a tow, row, row, row, row, row, to the British Grenadiers._

_Those heroes of antiquity ne’er saw a cannon ball,_  
_Or knew the force of powder to slay their foes withal._  
_But our brave boys do know it, and banish all their fears,_  
_With a tow, row, row, row, row, row, for the British Grenadiers._

 _Whene’er we are commanded to storm the palisades,_  
_Our leaders march with fusees, and we with hand grenades._  
_We throw them from the glacis, about the enemies’ ears._  
_Sing tow, row, row, row, row, row, the British Grenadiers._

With the constant light and no clocks or features on the walls, gauging the passage of time was difficult. Lena had tried just counting, but without much reference, that wasn’t much good.

She’d hit on the idea of singing “99 Bottles of Beer” after a bit, and while her voice was nowhere as good as Amé’s, it was serviceable enough for the pub. She’d remembered that the song took roughly 20 minutes to sing all the way through from 99 to nil, so she’d finished it and started moving on to as many other drinking and marching songs as she could remember to mark the time as she worried at the manacle on her right wrist.

By her reckoning, she’d just about hit three hours’ worth of singing when she heard the sound of the cell door being unlocked.

She shifted on the floor to sit facing the door, putting her hands in her lap to conceal the damage she’d been doing to the restraints, and watched as the heavy door opened to reveal…someone’s grand-dad, apparently.

“Hello, Lena. I hope your accommodations aren’t too uncomfortable.”

She put on the fakest smile she had as she looked up at her visitor, her voice dripping with false cheer. “Oh, what, this? Between the positively medieval accessories and constantly having the room lit like Times fucking Square? It’s lovely, really. Best stay I’ve had in ages.”

Grand-dad gave her a sympathetic look. “I am sorry about that. I believe Gérard is being…overzealous…but he felt it better to take every precaution. We have no interest in hurting you, after all.”

“Funny way of showing that,” Lena countered acidly, “knocking me out and chaining me up and all. And who is ‘We’ exactly? Aside from ‘apparently pals with my girl’s shitheel ex’.”

“Ah, how rude of me.” Grand-dad gave a little nod of his head. “My name is Father Pascal. I represent…well. Shall we say, a group who act in the best interests of humanity?”

“Ohh, one of those then? Lovely.” Lena considered. “Not wearing a hood, and you don’t look exactly like an Aryan ideal, so let me guess…Saint George?”

“Very good! That’s quite clever of you. I suppose you’ve probably encountered us once or twice in three hundred years.”

“Oh, here and there. Charged by God to defeat the ‘unnatural’, yeah? Which, last I checked, includes me.”

“That is true,” Pascal admitted, “but I have been convinced it is foolish to discard a useful tool.”

Lena didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Oh, have you?”

“It is easy,” Pascal explained eagerly, “to find a creature that shows its base nature in feathers, scale, or other obvious physical signs. But we have learned there are many who hide among us, their taint concealed beneath a smiling face. _Madame_ Lacroix explained that you have no such difficulty.”

Lena bristled. “If you've hurt her, mate..."

Pascal waved that away with a sweeping gesture. “Oh, nothing of the sort, my dear. If anything, I plan to _help_ the poor girl. She’s been very confused, these last few years.” The priest shook his head, his voice filled with concern. “It has pained Gérard to see her so lost, and I hope that I may help to guide her back to the proper path.”

Suddenly Grand-dad had a _very_ punchable face. Shame he was standing just outside of her reach. “I don’t really give half a damn what pains that bloke. She’s not his property to do with as he pleases.”

The priest shrugged. “Yet they are still husband and wife.”

She snorted derisively. “Divorced, last I checked.” 

“Mm. Legal paperwork. Gérard provided me with a copy so that I would file for an annulment with the Church. What a shame it was misplaced.” Pascal smiled mildly. “I believe that when what God has brought together begins to fray, we have an obligation to repair, rather than sunder. Their standing in the courts of man can be corrected easily enough in time.” The priest turned away from her for a moment, but she could catch the disgust in his eyes. “I wish you had not…taken from her. It is shameful enough that they were both unfaithful, but to willingly allow a parasite to feed from her…it is a disgrace.”

It took an effort to keep her voice from shaking with rage. “I’m not going to be a very helpful tool if you keep talking like that.”

Pascal chuckled indulgently as he turned back to face her. “Oh, from what we have learned about your kind, I think you can be convinced. After all, you must be getting hungry by now.”

Lena glared wordlessly, and Pascal’s bland smile grew just a bit. “I thought so. I will say – I understand you have been quite restrained. There’s no need here for that. We can provide you all that you need to be sated, in fact, so long as you cooperate.” Returning to the door, the priest knocked sharply, and it was opened just enough to hand over a bag of dark red fluid.

“We’d been keeping a watchful eye over our wayward daughter long before you became…involved…but once we began to realize what you were, we started to make preparations. I think you’ll find we’ll be very accommodating of your needs, once you begin to come around to our way of thinking.”

The chains rattled as Lena shook. The _need_ was competing with her anger, and she could see Pascal’s eyes light up with delight at her reaction. “And how exactly does _that_ work?”

“Well, you have two choices, really. Take the blood we can so generously offer you – and the care of the donor who has provided it – or you starve.”

Lena scowled. “And what if I decided to just walk right out that door?”

Pascal chuckled as he stepped back to the door. “Well, aside from the door being locked from the outside, there is one other thing…” Another rap to the door, and then he pointed above his head. “It may be a bit painful for you, but take a look at the ceiling - past the light fixtures.”

Lena narrowed her eyes and tried to focus past the painful glare. “Fire sprinklers. You think I’m bothered by a bit of wet?”

“As a matter of fact, no.” Pascal smirked. “Look more carefully.”

Her eyes widened as she realized that what she thought were sprinkler heads had bright blue pilot lights. “Are…are those gas? You’d burn this whole building down if you set all of those off! You people are _fucking crazy._ ”

“Prophets and visionaries are often seen as mad, until the day their words are realized as truth.” The door unbolted, and Pascal tossed the bag of blood to the floor at her feet with a wet thud. “Consider what I’ve said, my dear. We’d make such good use of you.”

* * *

Hana sighed as she took a quick glance at the lock screen on her phone. Eleven forty-five on a Saturday night and she just was _not_ raking it in from tips.

It wasn’t Gena’s fault that she wasn’t Amélie, but the backup bartender just didn’t have the same touch with the cocktail menu, and the patrons she’d been waiting on tonight hadn’t been as satisfied.

“This  _sucks_ ,” she grumbled to Athena as she rang up another table, “I’ve maybe made a hundred bucks tonight if I’m lucky. Usually it’s at _least_ twice that.”

The manager sighed. Hana knew she’d probably been hearing this from others. “I’m sorry, Hana. It’s a slow night – those happen.”

“Yeah, it’s just… _ugh_. At least I made enough streaming to make rent and buy groceries.” She looked over, feeling her primary ears twitching. “Anything new about how Amélie’s doing?”

Athena shrugged. “Lena was going to take her to a doctor. It sounds like whatever she caught was a lot more than food poisoning.”

Hana winced. “That sucks. We should do some get well flowers or something.”

“That’s very kind of you to suggest. I’ll see if Winston would help me get that together.”

“Well, I mean, she _is_ a friend, right?” Hana grinned. “Besides, the sooner she’s back the sooner I can hopefully make a few more bucks.”

Athena gave her a dry look, but her attention was grabbed by the door to the employees-only entrance opening. “Who…Winston’s upstairs. Everyone else is on the floor. What on _Earth_ …?”

The answer to her question came as men in black military like outfits burst into the club, most of them carrying shotguns, a few with heavy looking bags under their arms.

Most of them began to fan out into the club, but two of the intruders had made a beeline for the stage where Lúcio had been spinning, holding down on the DJ with shotguns.

“They shouldn’t have known about him,” Athena murmured under her breath, watching as the crowd began to try to run for the doors, “how…?”

Hana wanted to know what _that_ was about, but there wasn’t time to ask before the increasingly panicked crowd began to scream and shout, the guys with guns pushing them back, a few of the ones who had been carrying bags dropping them to the ground and then grabbing some of the more obvious cryptids and shoving them roughly to one side of the room as the (apparent) humans were pushed to the other.

Hana caught a flash of pink hair near the front as Aleksandra and one of the other doormen were being shoved inside, but then her attention – and her arm – were grabbed by one of the SWAT team looking guys, making her cry out in surprise as she was roughly tossed towards where others were being corralled.

* * *

_Dr. Ziegler to Emergency, please, Code Silver. Dr. Ziegler to the ER, Code Silver._

Angela looked up at the ceiling and stuck out her tongue. “Five minutes to midnight, and I’d be off of rotation. It never fails, does it?”

Standing from the chair she’d been sitting in, she reached for her notepad and stuffed it into one of the pockets on her lab coat, then punched in the number for the ER nurses’ station on her phone as she walked to the elevator.

- _Emergency, this is Buratto._

“Hello, Jill, this is Dr. Ziegler. What’s going on?”

_-We have a patient who just came in off the street – female, mid-30s, injured arm. She’s insisting she needs to speak to you before she’ll consent to treat._

“Oh, I see. Species?”

- _That’s the funny part. She’s human._

Angela blinked in confusion. “I’ll be right down.”

When she reached the ER floor, one of the floor nurses pointed her to one of the rooms that had been partitioned off, one of the hospital’s security guards waiting outside.

“Has anyone else been in since she asked to speak to me?”

The guard shook his head. “No, ma’am. They just asked me to wait here to make sure nobody bothered her – I understand she seems pretty shaken up. We had concerns this might be a DV issue.”

Angela nodded, taking a deep breath and centering herself before heading inside. “I understand. Thank you for the warning.”

To her great shock, the woman sitting on the hospital bed, her wrist wrapped in what appeared to be a pillowcase (and where were her _shoes?_ ) was someone she’d gotten to know quite well.

_“Amélie?”_

* * *

_Ho, brother Teague, dost hear the decree?_  
_Lillibullero bullen a la_  
_We are to have a new deputy_  
_Lillibullero bullen a la_

 _Lero Lero Lillibullero_  
_Lillibullero bullen a la_  
_Lero Lero Lero Lero_  
_Lillibullero bullen a la_

 _Oh by my soul it is a Talbot_  
_Lillibullero bullen a la_  
_And he will cut every Englishman's throat_  
_Lillibullero bullen a la_

 _Lero Lero Lillibullero_  
_Lillibullero bullen a la_  
_Lero Lero Lero Lero_  
_Lillibullero bullen a la_

When Lena had examined the bag of blood, all she needed to know about the contents was the name on the donor ID: LACROIX, G.

She’d backed up to the wall to get as much slack on her chains as she could, then threw the bag at the cell door, hard enough to make it split. The smell filling her nose didn’t help any with her hunger – made it a lot worse, if she were honest with herself – but she’d be damned if she took a drop of that bastard by choice.

Still, anger, hunger, and sheer fucking _spite_ were great motivators, and to her delight she felt the loop finally snap, taking the padlock with it, her singing hopefully concealing the sound.

“Check me out,” she said just in case someone _was_ listening, “I’m the World Service.”

She shook out her freed hand, then began to work on getting her other arm loose as she returned to the song.

 _And when we catch up with Saint George’s Boys_  
_Lillibullero bullen a la_  
_Then we'll show them what we think of their toys_  
_Lillibullero bullen a la_

 _Lero Lero Lillibullero_  
_Lillibullero bullen a la_  
_Lero Lero Lero Lero_  
_Lillibullero bullen a la…_


	13. Ballroom Blitz

Amélie still felt rather jumpy and unsettled as she sat on the bed the ER nurse had escorted her to. She’d taken an awful risk flagging down a passing car, but the driver had taken one look at the improvised bandage on her arm and her general appearance and had taken her over to the hospital without any argument.

She’d repeated Angela’s name like a mantra to the receptionist, the nurse, and anyone else who had asked her what had happened, desperately hoping that Lena’s friend would be here.

After what had seemed like an hour, she got her wish, the blonde’s jaw dropping as she realized who she was.

_“Amélie?”_

She smiled as best as she could – from the look on the doctor’s face, it wasn’t terribly convincing – and waved with her good hand. _“Bonjour.”_

The doctor’s professionalism quickly overcame her shock, moving in to examine her eyes. “What happened to you? Lena sent me a text the other day mentioning you were sick…”

The bartender’s stomach clenched. “ _Days?!_   What…what day is it?”

“Saturday – well, Sunday, now. A little after midnight.” Angela stepped back, her eyes sweeping over the pillowcase on her arm. “What happened to you, Amélie?”

“I have an ex-husband. Gérard. He…he attacked me, Friday afternoon. I…” Amélie shook her head. “I’m having trouble remembering things…I remember getting woken up somewhere. Someone said…that he wanted Lena for…something. I woke up in an apartment, I think Gérard’s, handcuffed to a bed. I crawled through the window. Got down the fire escape…asked to come here.”

Angela, bless her, didn’t try to dismiss her claims, just nodded. “Is that how you hurt your arm?”

“I used to dislocate my joints all the time as a little girl. It’s part of why I stopped dancing. I wasn’t doing it on purpose, then, but I still remembered how it happened. That’s how I got out of the bed.”

Angela nodded, carefully reaching out to take her injured arm. “May I unwrap this, please?”

Amélie nodded, hissing in pain when the doctor unwrapped and manipulated the wrist.

“Sorry,” Angela apologized, “the good news is I shouldn’t have much trouble getting it back in place – but it will hurt.”

Amélie held up her good hand. “Before you do – there is something else, and it’s important. Gérard…the people helping him…they’re the same ones that Fareeha told us about, the night we met. The ones she was trying to find. She needs to know.”

Angela stared. “If anyone else was telling me this, in the condition that you were in, I’d think they were on drugs.”

“I know it sounds insane. I _feel_ insane…but it happened.”

Angela considered that, then reached for her phone.

\---

**Lena**

_Hello, Lena.  
How is Amélie doing?_

 

Oh, hi Angela!

She’s still got a sick tummy, but I’m here with her.

If she doesn’t feel better on Monday we’ll see the doctor.

_That’s good._

_Don’t forget to push fluids!_

Will do!

\---

Angela stared down at her phone for a long moment, then hit a speed dial. “Fareeha? I need you to call me back as soon as you get this.”

When she’d finished, she looked back to where Amélie sat, her blue eyes flashing. “I believe you. Now, let’s get that arm set and get you checked over right away.”

* * *

The one good thing about everyone assuming that short means harmless, Hana thought, was that assholes like these tended to ignore her after she was out of their sight.

They were still shoving people around, separating out as many non-humans as they could, while she crawled on her hands and knees towards the duffle bag that had been left on the floor. Reaching out to open the zipper, she blinked in confusion.

“Milk cartons,” she murmured to herself in disbelief, “what, are these guys buying groceries and then robbing people? That’s totally the wrong order.”

After a moment, she realized the coated cardboard containers had been opened and glued back up – which was _really_ odd. Carefully opening the closest one, she nearly gagged at the smells of gasoline, soap, and motor oil that wafted out.

_Oh, crap._

Backing away as quickly as she could, her eyes flicked up to where Athena and Lúcio stood, surrounded by armed men.

“Ok, Hana, you’re just trapped in the club with a bunch of creeps with guns, who look like they want to burn the place down. Pretty sure you played this Unturned level for a stream and it was _bullshit_ , so just keep calm and D.Va on…”

If she was careful and kept people between her and the guys with guns (and who _were_ these guys anyway?) she might be able to get to the door leading to Winston’s office – and so far they hadn’t gone up there to look for him, so hopefully that meant he was calling all the cops.

She was just about to the back wall when things radically changed.

From the corner where two of the shotgun toting men had rounded up the staff and patrons who appeared human, there came a noise that made the blood in Hana’s veins turn to ice, even as part of her became excited for what these bastards were about to receive.

It began as an almost seismic growl that seemed too deep for a human throat to make, like some kind of an industrial equipment that had been suddenly switched on, but it quickly rose to a terrifyingly, impossibly loud roar as the people who had been standing around Aleksandra dropped to the ground or simply ran in a panic, ignoring the men with guns in the face of something they instinctively knew was much more dangerous.

Where the pink-haired, muscular woman had stood was now a hulking grey-and-white-furred _shape_ that glowered at the room with burning red eyes, the entire room frozen in place for a moment in reaction to what had just happened.

Broad feet with thick, heavy nails lead to thickly muscled digitigrade legs, a broad, powerfully-built torso skipping the neck to just blend into a head topped by ears like a bear and a wickedly fanged snout. Massive arms hung low, the hands ending in thick fingers, each one tipped with a wickedly hooked claw.

Leaping forward impossibly quickly, the bear-like creature bellowed a challenge as she seized the two nearest attackers by their heads, her claws leaving bloody furrows in their wake, then slammed their skulls together with a sickening crack before dropping them to the floor in a boneless heap.

The last time she’d seen something like this, it had been a couple of years ago, when she’d been dragged into an alley on her way home from work by a group of guys who had heard that fox-woman tails went for big money on the black market.

She’d screamed for help and been almost as scared by her unexpected rescuer as the men who’d tried to mutilate her, but right now as frightening as it was to see Aleks wreck these guys, it sure beat burning to death.

* * *

All things considered, Fareeha Amari was not having a good day. She hadn’t been having a lot of good days lately, with the rise in interspecies hate crimes over the last year, and the phone call she’d gotten before heading to the Midtown South station had _not_ improved things.

Striding in from the parking lot, she made a beeline to the crisis briefing room where the precinct Captain waited with several other officers.

“Can you give me an update on what’s going on?”

“First call came into 911 dispatch at a little past quarter to midnight,” the Captain explained, “about armed men going into a club. The switchboard lit up a couple minutes later saying they’d come onto the dance floor and started grabbing people. A few from people who got out, a few from people inside the club – including the owner, who said he was able to lock himself in his office.”

Fareeha nodded. “And he said they appear to be separating out non-human patrons?”

“That’s right,” the Captain confirmed, “and taking hostages.”

“Any demands yet?”

“Not yet but we’re prepping SWAT and a negotiator. We’re keeping the media away and we’ve got a cordon around the block.”

Her phone buzzed, and she took a heartbeat to see Angela’s name before sending it to voicemail.

_Sorry, beautiful. I won’t be home for a while at this rate._

* * *

Aleksandra’s transformation had triggered something of a rampage – and it wasn’t going in the favor of the bad guys.

Their big advantages were surprise, guns, and fear. Not that the guns weren’t a bit of an equalizer, but once they lost the other two advantages, they were outnumbered by at least five to one.

Hana was mostly just trying to grab people and guide them towards the door that the black suited men had come in from, rather than the front doors that had been chained up. No time to mess with that, anyway.

She’d gotten a good two dozen out of the way, while Aleksandra, a couple of the other bouncers, and Athena had accounted for probably half the goons when one of the remaining thugs fired his shotgun into the ceiling.

The flash and the noise brought things to another standoff, and the shooter pulled down the front of his balaclava, exposing his mouth and taking a deep breath for a shout:  ** _“ENOUGH!”_**

Reaching into his pocket, he raised a black box with a glowing red button set into it. “This is the trigger for a bomb! One more step, and you freaks will be sent back to Hell – and the real humans raised up as martyrs!”

Before he could make good on that threat, there came an incongruous sound of singing – a soft, pleasant melody that immediately made Hana feel relaxed and more than a bit drowsy.

 _Sapo jururu, na beira do rio_  
_Quando o sapo canta, ó maninha_  
_é porque tem frio._

 _A mulher do sapo deve estar_  
_lá dentro, fazendo rendinha,_  
_ó maninha para o casamento…_

The bomber’s eyes drooped, and Hana looked over to see Lúcio, his helmet off, singing to their attackers, eyes closed and hands held wide, and as he continued to sing, all but one of the black suited attackers (and more than a few of the patrons who remained in the club) slumped and fell to the floor.

The last one clung to her gun like it was the only thing keeping him – no, Hana realized, her – alive as both Athena and Aleks stalked towards her, the vuhcari growling threateningly as the marble-skinned woman fixed the attempted arsonist with a furious glower.

“You can give me your gun,” Athena explained icily, “and take your chances with the police…or I can ask Aleks to _eat_ you.”

* * *

Lena was surprised to hear the door unbolting again. She hadn’t broken the other cuff – yet – but she grabbed the broken cuff and slid it back around her wrist before tucking her hands into her lap.

She stiffened as Gérard entered the cell, another unit of blood in his hand. “ _Bonjour, ma petite chienne._ ”

Unlike with Pascal, Lena didn’t even bother pretending to be pleasant. “Fuck off.”

Last time she’d seen him, Gérard had been wearing a fairly nice looking suit and tie. Now he was wearing something that looked very much like a military uniform, all in black, the holstered shape of a pistol tucked under his arm, and taser hanging off of his hip. “Is that any way to talk to the man who was kind enough to provide for your meals?”

Lena glared. “Thanks, but I’m not feeling so hungry. Something a little slimy putting me off my appetite.”

Gérard sighed as he leaned back against the door. “You don’t have to make this so difficult, you know. I understand you had a lovely conversation with Father Pascal.”

“That’d be the one where he told me I was an unholy parasite who had ruined Amé forever, right?” Lena’s sarcastic tone made it clear how lovely she thought that conversation had really been. “Or maybe the part where he told me that I can either become your little pet or get burned to death.”

“You could also starve,” Gérard admitted, “but I don’t think it will come to that. After all, you’ve lived such a long, full life. Hardly what I would expect from someone who would let herself die in such a way.” His smile had an oily quality to it, and part of Lena desperately wanted to just crack him in the jaw and be done with it. “I wonder if your hunger would even allow you to do so – if we were to let you become desperate, and then toss a bag of blood to you, could you resist it? Could you keep yourself from that temptation?”

Lena snorted. “If giving into that temptation meant that I’d be helping you in any way? I’ll do my best to manage.”

Gérard shook his head. “All I would ask of you is to continue what you have already been doing. To find your own kind that hide among decent men and women – we could even let you enjoy a drink or two, mm? That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

Lena went silent for a moment, and when she finally replied, her voice was low and quiet. “You mentioned I’ve had a long life. A very long life…and I’ve heard those kind of arguments before, you know. From people who wanted to find ‘the enemy’ that they blamed for all their troubles, who they claimed were undermining their country.”

Gérard raised an eyebrow. “And what became of them?”

Lena gave him a grin that was anything but nice. “Well. First time around I ended up being asked by an old friend to help him take care of some business back home, then hopped a ride over to the Continent with some lads to finish the job. Fought our way across France, then down into Italy before we went all the way into Berlin.”

Gérard’s face darkened as he realized what Lena was talking about – who he was being compared to – but Lena didn’t give him the chance to object.

“Had a pretty good time after that. Got to enjoy almost thirty years before I started hearing people talk like that again. Started seeing those armbands, their uniforms, their flags again, crawling into clubs and bringing their shit into places it wasn’t wanted. Going after anyone who was different enough that they felt they could get away with harassing them.”

Gérard scowled. “And I suppose you harassed them back?”

“No,” Lena corrected him, “because trying to act reasonable – even just trying to solve things with words – never got anywhere. Because you gave them even an inch, and they’d take a mile. Usually by stomping right over you. So we started to hit _back_. Hit _harder_. Drove the buggers out and made it clear that kind of thing wasn’t going to be allowed in our scene. Not then, not now, not _ever._ ”

Her eyes flashed as she stood, careful to keep the busted cuff tight to her arm as the chains rattled around her. “I wouldn’t piss on a Nazi if he was on fire, and the only way I’ll _ever_ help you is over my dead body. You want me to take your blood? Go to Hell. You want to try to force yourself on me like you tried with Amélie? Come and have a go, if you think you’re hard enough. But I promise, you’re gonna leave this room in a _fucking_ _ ambulance._”

Anger, disgust, and just a little bit of fear filled the Frenchman’s eyes, and she wasn’t surprised that he turned away, knocking at the door to be let back out.

“A pretty little speech, _ma chienne._ But we’ll see just what you say in another week or two.” He held up the bag of blood, then placed it on the cell floor, just outside of what he believed she could reach. “I’ll be back when you have…more of an appetite.”

She stood, wordlessly glaring her hatred at him, until the heavy steel door slammed shut again, then sat and redoubled her efforts to bust her remaining restraint, half-singing, half-shouting the most appropriate lyrics she could think of at the walls just in case her jailor had stuck around to listen.

 _Punk ain’t no religious cult_  
_Punk means thinking for yourself_  
_You ain’t hardcore when you spike your hair_  
_When a jock still lives inside your head_

 _Nazi punks_  
_Nazi punks_  
_Nazi punks_  
_Fuck Off!_

 _Nazi punks_  
_Nazi punks_  
_Nazi punks_  
_**Fuck Off!**_


	14. Why Can't I Be (with) You

The floor of Club L’Enfer managed to look even more chaotic in the aftermath of what had been, essentially, a terrorist attack than it had during the actual event and the brief melee that had ensued.

Uniformed police and fire department personnel swarmed the club, placing markers at the locations of the firebombs as each were removed for safe disposal, marking the location of injured bodies, taking pictures of the crime scene, and generally trying to stay out of each other’s way.

Aleksandra had been wrapped in a rescue blanket after she’d shifted back into her human appearance, the clothes she had been wearing destroyed by her transformation. Hana had scooped up the Russian’s keys and wallet before the cops had seized the tattered rags that had been her pants as evidence, and sat down next to the pink haired woman while they waited for permission to go upstairs to the employee lockers, where Aleks could get some spare clothes.

“Hey, bear-girl.”

Aleks grunted. Not too surprising, all things considered. She’d noticed the last time she’d seen the Russian transform that she didn’t use a lot of spoken language for a little while after she’d changed back.

“Good job on not killing anyone,” Hana offered, “not that they didn’t deserve it.”

That got a dark little chuckle out of the bouncer.

Admittedly, most of the ones Aleks had mauled would be in the hospital for a long time, but between the shotguns and the firebombs, the cops had made it clear they’d give a lot of leeway to ‘acts of self-defense’ in this situation. Manslaughter might have been a tougher one to get away with.

Hana looked over and could see a tall, coppery skinned woman with dark hair in a suit and long coat talking to Athena and Winston, who had come down from his office as soon as he’d finished letting the police know that it was safe for them to come in.

The healthy spike of adrenaline that had run through her was draining, and Hana felt incredibly exhausted. “Hey, Aleks? Can I borrow some blanket?”

The bouncer gave her a little smile and a small nod.

Hana leaned in, closing her eyes and resting her head against the heavy cloth. “Thanks…wake me up if the cops need me…”

* * *

“Three…two…one… _there_ we go!”

Amélie gasped from the shock as Angela put her wrist back into joint, but the pain faded almost immediately to a dull ache, with no sharp flares or stabbing pain as she tested the range of motion. “Thank you, Doctor.”

“Oh, ‘Angela’ is fine, don’t worry about that.” She gently inspected her wrist one last time, then nodded with satisfaction. “Try not to stress anything and you can immobilize it if you think it will help.” She looked up at the clock. “Now, I’m technically off shift and I haven’t heard back from Fareeha yet – let me see about getting discharge papers done for you, and I can take you…” Angela paused. “Well. Wherever you would feel safe.”

Amélie took a moment to consider that. “I have clothes and some shoes at Lena’s apartment, and I know how to get her spare key. I think…I think it feels safer than going back to my apartment.”

Angela nodded, making a few notes on her chart and then closing it up. “All right. Let me get things taken care of for you, and pick up my coat – I’ll grab a set of patient slippers for you, too. They won’t be as good as shoes, but it should keep your feet warm while we go to my car.”

It took nearly an hour between getting Amélie’s discharge papers and making their way over to Lena’s building, but she felt anything but tired as she lead Angela up the stairwell, skipping Lena’s floor and going up to the roof access.

The doctor blinked as she realized where they were headed. “Why does she keep it on the roof?”

Amélie smiled despite all that was going on. “She likes hopping about on the rooftops, and who would think to look up here?” Walking to what appeared to be a disused rooftop pigeon coop, she reached under the fourth box from the left, pulling a key from where it had been taped to the wood.

It wasn’t the first time she’d gone into Lena’s apartment without her lover being home, but it felt colder, somehow, the quiet giving a sense of emptiness and desolation instead of waiting and welcome.

She tried to push the fear out of her mind, asking Angela to wait in the living room while she went into the bedroom to get dressed.

Lena’s bed was unmade – as usual – and a few pieces of clothing lay next to the bed. Without really thinking about it, she crossed to pick up a shirt – the Union Jack t-shirt she loved to wear on nights she planned to dance at the club – and held it in her hands, taking a deep breath of her lover’s scent. Tears welled in her eyes as fear gripped her again – had she even told Lena that she loved her before she’d left the apartment on Friday?

 _No_ , she mentally chided herself, _there’s no time to wallow in fear. Lena needs help. Get up!_

It took a moment to force herself into standing, but once she was up she went to the closet with a renewed will, picking out fresh clothes and heavy boots. Pulling off the clothes she’d been wearing for the best part of three days, in particular the stained and filthy socks which she tossed in the garbage straight away. Dressing in a plain blouse, dark slacks, socks, and boots. Pulling her hair back and putting it up, then taking a moment to look at herself in the mirror.

“You look terrible,” she observed to her reflection with a bitter laugh, “but it will do.”

When she reached the living room, Angela was on her phone again.

“Yes, I did – what kept you? Are you alright?” There was a long pause and the doctor’s face went progressively more pale as she listened to those answers.  “ _What?!_ Was anyone…? Oh, thank god. Wait – did you say _firebombs?_ ”

Angela listened for a few moments and then shook her head. “No, no, that’s _why_ I was trying to call you – Amélie came into the ER just before midnight, she’d been kidnapped by her ex-husband – it sounds like he may be working with some of those same people and managed to get– Yes. No, she says she was never…that’s what we’re _worried_ about. Has anyone seen her since…?”

The doctor shivered and looked over to Amélie with worry in her eyes. “I think you need to talk to her as soon as you can. We’re at Lena’s apartment right now. Can you get over here? Good. God, yes, put your foot down, _schatz_. _Tschüss._ ”

Amélie stared at the doctor, dread growing in her gut. “What has happened?”

“Apparently a group of armed men broke into Club L’Enfer tonight – tried to burn the building down. Fortunately, they were stopped, but that’s why Fareeha wasn’t returning my calls.”

A fragment of her jumbled memory suddenly passed through Amélie’s mind - _Your ‘friends’ won’t be there much longer – nor will your job, I assure you._ She half sagged, half fell onto the couch, her head in her hands. “ _That_ is what he meant…”

“What do you mean?” Angela grabbed one of the kitchen chairs, reversing it and leaning on the chair back as she sat down to face her. “What is it?”

Amélie shook her head, wishing a few more of her scattered memories would fall into place as a result. “I remembered – just before I was taken from the café where Gérard had cornered me to try to ‘convince’ me to go back to him again – he said that my job wouldn’t be there much longer. I didn’t understand…”

Angela frowned. “You think he attacked the club because of you?”

Amélie considered that. “I think…they would have attacked it anyhow, simply for being a place that nonhumans liked to come together. My working there just happened to be a happy bonus for him.” She shuddered. “How did I _ever_ think I loved that man?”

The doctor reached out, putting a hand on Amélie’s shoulder. “I didn’t meet you until you and Lena had already begun to date, and I’ve never met your ex-husband, but I see more victims of domestic abuse than I would care to count. Many times they found themselves charmed by men who are very, very skilled at deception, and didn’t learn about the ugliness beneath until it was too late to escape easily. Don’t blame yourself for being deceived – be proud of the fact that you _did_ get away, and found a much healthier relationship.”

Amélie smiled back weakly. “ _Merci, l’ange._ ”

* * *

Winston frowned as he watched Detective Amari’s face become progressively graver as she spoke to someone on her phone. That wasn’t likely good news at all – and tonight wasn’t exactly what anyone would call a night of joyful festivities.

He reached towards where Athena stood, her eyes flicking around the room and likely calculating how big of an insurance claim they’d be making on Monday morning, and sighed as her warm, slim fingers wrapped around his fur covered hand.

“Something’s bothering you, isn’t it?” The oread raised an eyebrow. “Beyond…well, all of this.”

Winston huffed out a sigh. “A few things – but one of the biggest is wondering what kind of a phone call the detective is having. She doesn’t look happy.”

Athena considered that with a nod. “She doesn’t. I hate to say it, but I hope it’s because someone _else_ had a bad night. We’ve got plenty to deal with here as it is.”

Winston grunted agreement, then looked over to where Lúcio was checking on his equipment. “ _That’s_ the other thing.” He raised his free hand to gesture towards the stage. “How did they know about him? The list of people who knew why we hired him is _very_ short.”

Athena grimaced. “And I know she’s your friend, Winston, but…two of them aren’t here.”

Winston bristled. “Lena would _never_ work with scum like that. And I certainly can’t imagine Amélie even telling them the time of day.”

“I know,” Athena sighed, “I can’t either, but…how else?”

Winston went quiet for a moment. “Have you heard from either of them today?”

“Lena texted me this morning, but just to say Amélie was still sick.” Athena looked towards the door. “When we can get out of here, maybe we should go check on them.”

“Good idea,” Winston admitted, “Besides, it’s not like we can go up to the apartment – the whole building’s a crime scene. We’ll probably want to get a hotel room anyway.”

Before they could get much further, the detective strode across the room to them, her face a mask of concentration.

“I need to ask you some questions about one of your employees. Can I speak with you both privately?”

Winston gave Athena a concerned glance. “Are we allowed up to my office?”

“As long as I take you up there,” the detective agreed, “yes. We’ll be taking your employees up to gather belongings before letting them go, too, but I want to get this done first.”

They followed her up the stairs, Winston just barely fitting under the crime scene tape barring the doorway to his office, where he settled into his oversized office chair out of habit, while Athena stood next to him.

“So you needed to ask us about an employee?” Winston asked, curiosity and concern in his voice.

The detective nodded, pulling a notepad out of her pocket. “Your bartender, Amélie Lacroix. I need to know her home address, please.”

Something cold settled in Winston’s stomach. Had he been so wrong about her? The bartender had never acted like she’d ever cooperate with human supremacists, and yet the police wanted to know where to find her? “Oh. Um. Sure…Athena, could you…?”

Wordlessly, she walked to a filing cabinet and pulled out Amelie’s payroll and tax paperwork, handing them over to the police officer, who quickly made several notes on her pad before closing the folder. “Thank you, that’s very helpful.”

Athena stiffened. “You can’t think she had anything to do with this. I know she’s human, but she’s been one of our _best_ employees for years.”

Detective Amari went to the door, making sure no one would overhear them before she spoke. “I normally wouldn’t tell either of you this, but since these cases appear to be connected…” She straightened, her eyes flashing. “Amélie Lacroix showed up in the Mt. Sinai ER about three hours ago, claiming to have been kidnapped a few days ago.”

Winston’s eyes widened as he rose from his chair. “What?” He met Athena’s eyes. “Didn’t you say she texted you because she was sick?”

Athena had gone almost as pale as she did when her skin transformed itself to stone. “I…yes, Friday. I let Lena know when she dropped in a few hours later, and I got a text about two in the afternoon saying she still wasn’t feeling well.”

The detective nodded. “In this case…well. Anyone can send a text message. Now – can you tell me if either of you saw Lena Oxton in person after she left the club on Friday night?”

“No,” Winston admitted, “I don’t think anyone has.”

That got a raised eyebrow. “Is that normal for her?”

Athena shrugged. “Before she began dating an employee? We’d usually see her in once or twice a week – a regular, but not a nightly one. Now, she’s normally in any night Amélie works. She’ll dance or spend some time chatting during her shift and then they normally go home together.”

Winston nodded. “Since Amélie was supposed to be sick…I usually text with her now and then during the week, and sometimes she stops by to say hello, but this wasn’t unusual.”

Detective Amari scribbled a few more notes, her eyes thoughtful. “Does anyone else at the club have regular contact with either of them outside of work during the day?”

“Not really,” Athena admitted with a sigh, “Amélie’s friendly with several other employees but tends to hang out after work, if anything.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Amari sighed, “I need to go speak with Ms. Lacroix – she’s our only possible witness right now, but I’m going to have her apartment secured as a potential crime scene.”

Winston slumped back into his chair. “Is…is she alright? Where is she now?”

“I think that ‘alright’ is a very relative concept this evening.” Rather than answer the other question, Amari raised her notebook again. “Are either of you familiar with her ex-husband?”

Athena nodded. “His name is Gérard. He’s been banned from the club for some time.”

“Does he have a history of abuse? Or violent behavior?”

Winston scowled “It’s part of the reason she left him, and why he is not welcome here.”

“Right.” Amari closed her notepad and slipped it into her coat pocket. “You each have a copy of my card – I’d like you to please call me if anything comes up, or you should think of anything else that may be helpful.”

Athena’s eyes narrowed. “You haven’t said where Amélie is right now.”

“She’s safe – I can’t disclose anything else while she’s a material witness. I know you’re her friends, not just her employers…” She smiled slightly. “I can bend the rules and call you after I’m done with her deposition.”

Athena placed a hand on the sasquatch’s shoulder, and Winston reached up to squeeze it, giving the detective a grateful nod. “I appreciate that, thank you.”

* * *

_Oh, the year was 1778,_   
_How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now!_   
_A letter of marque came from the king,_   
_To the scummiest vessel I'd ever seen,_

_God damn them all!_

_I was told we'd cruise the seas for American gold_   
_We'd fire no guns-shed no tears_   
_Now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier_   
_The last of Barrett's Privateers._

_Oh, Elcid Barrett cried the town,_   
_How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now!_   
_For twenty brave men all fishermen who_   
_would make for him the Antelope's crew_

_God damn them all!_

_I was told we’d cruise the seas for American gold_  
 _We’d fire no guns-shed no tears_  
 _Now I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier_  
 _The last of Barrett's Privateers._  
  
_The Antelope sloop was a sickening sight,_  
 _How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now…_

Lena sighed as she trailed off, shaking her head. “…and I forget the rest of how it goes, God damn me, too.”

She was really starting to feel tired, in addition to hungry. Without her goggles, trying to close her eyes and sleep with the constant overheads wasn’t working very well, and that bag of Gérard’s blood taunted her, his oily voice echoing in her mind.

_A drink or two wouldn’t be so bad, would it?_

Lena snarled at the thought. “Fuck. Off.” Sure, she could pretend it was a bag from Angie or some random donor, but…it wasn’t just about feeding herself. Accepting his blood, thrust upon her, was as good as admitting she _could_ be his little dog. One or two? All too easy for it to become three or four or five…and if she started to _listen_ to the poison he’d be all too happy to murmur in her ears…

“I’d never be able to look Amé in the eye. Or anyone else.”

He was absolutely right – she didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to become Saint George’s pointer dog for all of their little ‘dragonslayers’ either – and she certainly didn’t want to become charcoal.

Only one option left to her, really: Escape.

Of course, she had to get her damned hand free for that.

She kept working the lock against the manacle, just as she had earlier. This one was taking longer – she couldn’t say if it was a case of a slightly better made cuff or her increasing fatigue.

The thought made her push a little harder, and to her delight, there was a sharp _ping_ as the cuff gave way.

“ _Finally_.”

Rubbing her hands together, she walked to the door, scrutinizing the frame.

Heavy steel door…steel door frame…drywall.

_Somebody didn’t think that one all the way through._

It took an effort of will to avoid the bag of blood as she walked back to where she’d been sitting, laying back on the floor and shielding her eyes with her hands.

She wouldn’t get more than one chance at this. She’d need to rest up as much as she could – and take her shot when the opportunity came.

_London calling to the faraway towns_   
_Now war is declared, and battle come down_   
_London calling to the underworld_   
_Come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls_

_London calling, now don’t look to us_   
_Phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust_   
_London calling, see we ain’t got no swing_   
_'Cept for the ring of that truncheon thing_

_The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in_   
_Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin_   
_Engines stop running, but I have no fear_   
_’Cause London is drowning, and I live by the river_

_Now get this_

_London calling, yes, I was there, too_   
_An’ you know what they said? Well, some of it was true!_   
_London calling at the top of the dial_   
_After all this, won't you give me a smile?_   
_London calling_

_I never felt so much alike…_


	15. Memories Like A Shroud

As much as she loved her bike, Fareeha had to admit that pulling an unmarked car from the motor pool had its benefits.

Case in point: the lights and siren she’d flicked on to get people the hell out of her way as she crossed the bridge. Traffic at two thirty on Sunday morning wasn’t as bad as, say, eight AM on Monday, but she was still periodically forced to lean on her horn to remind someone of proper traffic etiquette.

She reached the apartment building where Lena resided and pulled in next to Angela’s sedan, then dashed up the stairs two at a time until reaching the vampire’s apartment. Two firm raps at the door and a tight hug from her girlfriend later, she was sitting down in a chair across from her witness, her notepad in hand while Angela settled onto the other end of the couch.

“I am going to have to treat this as professionally as I can, Amélie, and that means I may ask some questions that seem hurtful. I don’t want you to think I have anything against you – I don’t – but I have to do my job here before anything else.”

The bartender nodded, taking a deep breath before she spoke. “I understand, yes. I want to answer as much as I can, but…” She shook her head. “I don’t know exactly what Gérard did to me, but it’s very hard for me to remember some of what happened.”

Fareeha nodded sympathetically. “From what I’ve been told you’ve been through some very traumatic events. That can leave a mark, too. Just try to answer as best as you can.”

Amélie drew herself up and met the detective’s eyes. “I’m ready.”

“Alright.” Fareeha flipped back in her notepad for a moment to check some of the information she’d taken down at L’Enfer, then back to the fresh page.  “The last time you were seen by the staff at L’Enfer was Thursday evening, correct?”

“Yes,” Amélie confirmed with a slight blush, “I performed at the karaoke night. I did something special for Lena. She’d been teasing me about music and encouraging me to sing for her, so I sang and turned it into a bit of a tease back.”

Fareeha nodded. “And afterwards?”

“We went back to her apartment. We…were intimate.” The bartender opened the collar of her shirt to reveal the still healing punctures at her neck. “She asked if she could feed from me. I agreed.”

Angela’s eyes widened slightly at that, and Fareeha raised an eyebrow. “I thought Lena had been concerned about doing that.”

“It…was a special occasion.” Amélie fidgeted slightly, but didn’t look away. “She’s been exclusively drinking from the blood Angela provided for the last several months, but we were both…” She shrugged. “I am not afraid of her, Detective. I think she is finally becoming less afraid of herself.”

Fareeha made a thoughtful noise as she made a small note – _Partners were extremely intimate._ “You’re not concerned about the possibility of her hurting you?”

“Absolutely not. She’s never been anything but kind to me – she’s gone to ridiculous lengths to make sure I would be safe around her, and at my job.” Amélie’s face became drawn. “Even before the last few days…I knew Lena was not such a person. All too well.”

“I see.” Fareeha went quiet for a moment, considering what Winston had said about Amélie’s ex-husband, and decided to move forward. “Can you walk me through your day on Friday?”

“I had a bit of breakfast and talked with Lena before she went to run some errands of her own. I left her apartment…mm. Around half past noon, I think. I went grocery shopping, then took the subway back to my apartment and put them away.”

“Do you have the receipt for the groceries, by chance?”

Amélie shook her head. “It was in my purse, which was taken.”

Fareeha nodded. “All right. Please, keep going – what did you do after you went back to your apartment?”

“I texted Lena to let her know I had some things to bring to her apartment later. I dressed for work and left about three thirty in the afternoon. I planned to get lunch before I went to the club when Gérard – my ex-husband – intercepted me as I left the building.”

Fareeha continued to take notes, particularly the times – that’s something which could be checked. “And what happened then?”

“I asked him how he knew where I lived – he’s not supposed to. I never told him. He wouldn’t give me a straight answer. He said…he claimed he was leaving the country soon, and wanted to talk to me before he left. He said he wanted to ‘close the book.’” Amélie shook her head ruefully. “I was a fool, and I told him I would give him five minutes of my time. I should have just walked away.”

Angela reached out to place a supportive hand on the taller woman’s shoulder, but didn’t interrupt.

“He…there’s a café, near the N line stop. I followed him there. We sat down at a table and he…he kept just saying the same _shit_ that he had used so many times before. How he loved me. How he made a mistake. How he was the problem and I knew he was just going to ask me to come back to him _again_.” Her lips curled in disgust. “Once I might have believed him. I am stronger than that now.”

“So,” Fareeha asked quietly, “what did you do at that point?”

Amélie straightened up again. “I stood up, and I told him that was enough. I told him I was leaving, and that I did not _want_ him. Not now, not ever.” She took her uninjured wrist in the other hand. “He grabbed me. Said he wanted to ask me one more thing.”

Fareeha’s eyes narrowed as she noted that but let her continue.

“He asked…why I hated who I was. Why I hated being human.”

Fareeha took a sharp breath. _That_ was a red flag.

Amélie looked down at her arm, and the floor. “I…I stopped, and began to argue with him. I should have just kept walking but he made me so _angry_. The things he said were disgusting. Hateful. The more he talked about the ‘scavengers and parasites hiding around us’ I realized…he was one of the people you spoke to us about. The ones being investigated.”

Amélie suddenly seemed painfully aware that she was in a non-human’s apartment, speaking with two more non-humans. “ _Désolée._ Those are his words – his beliefs – not mine.”

Angela smiled. “I hardly think you’d be friends with so many of us if they were.”

Fareeha did her best to keep herself in Cop mode, but gave a little nod. “I’ve heard it all before.”

Amélie gave a nod of her own. “ _Merci._ I…after I realized that, I called him out for it, and he was…proud. He called it ‘holy work’. He told me he had become a member of Saint George. That they had ‘saved’ him, after our divorce.”

Fareeha’s gut clenched. This was tying together all too well. “What did you do then?”

Amélie sighed. “I tried to leave. He grabbed me again after I tried to slap him. When I told him I was not leaving my friends, or my job, or the people I loved…he said they wouldn’t be there much longer…and I remember someone touching me from behind before everything hurt…I fell…things went dark.”

Now she did look to Angela, and the doctor grimaced. “I found evidence of superficial burns on her back consistent with a high voltage electrical discharge when I examined her. Also signs of a puncture on her right arm that suggests she had something administered by injection or IV.”

Fareeha nodded. _Medical examination confirms victim was struck by a taser and may have been drugged against her will._ “How much can you remember, after that?”

“Very little,” Amélie admitted, “Fragments. Talking to a man I didn’t recognize. Being asked things about Lena, I think. I don’t remember exactly but I…I know they wanted to hurt her. To take her.”

Angela frowned. “I don’t understand _why_ , though. If they hate us so badly, why try to kidnap her, too?”

Fareeha sat back with a sigh. “If Saint George has been responsible for the recent attacks, and that seems likely with everything that’s happened, they’ve mostly targeted _obvious_ non-humans. Lena…might be a way they could find others. Ones who blend in without being as easily spotted.”

Amélie looked ready to vomit. “I lead them straight to her…”

Angela bristled. “Remember what we spoke about earlier – _you_ are not responsible for what _they_ did, Amélie. You couldn’t have known.”

“Regardless,” Fareeha held up a hand, “we’re getting off track.” She looked back to Amélie. “At any point did you send text messages to your boss saying you were ill? Or that you needed the night off of work?”

“Absolutely not.”

“I suspected as much, but I had to ask.” Fareeha considered her next question. “What’s the next thing you can remember clearly?”

“I woke up in a stranger’s bedroom – I think it might have been Gérard’s but I didn’t look closely – and my arm was in a leather cuff, strapped to the bed.” She looked over to Angela. “I told Angela this already, but I used to dislocate my joints quite often as a child. I still can, it seems. I pulled until I dislocated my wrist, then worked out of the cuff. Once I did that and bandaged my arm as best as I could, I opened the window and crawled onto the fire escape.”

“Did anyone stop you? Come in to see what had happened?”

“ _Non_. I don’t know if I was lucky or if…” Amélie bit at her lip. “With what I have been told about what happened at the club tonight, perhaps Gérard was there.”

“I’m sorry to say that if he was, he wasn’t taken into custody. So. Fire escape – what then?”

“I made my way to the street as best as I could, then started trying to flag down cars. I was lucky enough that someone stopped, and I remembered where Angela worked. I asked them to take me to Mt. Sinai and I insisted on speaking to her until someone brought her down to the ER to see me…and you know the rest, I think.”

“Do you recall what part of town you were in when you were picked up? Who picked you up?”

Amélie frowned. “I didn’t pay as much attention but…there were cobblestones under my feet. I didn’t have shoes. It was difficult to walk on because they were so cold and uneven.”

That narrowed things down considerably – only so many parts of the City still had Belgian blocks instead of pavement.  She shut the notebook and placed it into her pocket. “I have to ask you to stay here for now. I already sent a request in to have your apartment secured as a possible crime scene. From what I have been told I think there’s a good chance that’s where they attacked Lena. I am going to have it processed and gather as much evidence as we can, then call Angela when it is safe for you to go back in.”

Amélie shook her head. “I’m not sure it’s ever going to feel safe for me again, there. Not if Gérard could find it so easily.”

“I understand,” Fareeha offered as comfortingly as she could, “and for what it’s worth I agree with Angela – nothing that happened to you, nothing that Saint George or your ex-husband did – was your fault. You’re a victim, Amélie. You deserve justice, not blame.”

The bartender sighed. “In my mind I know you are right…but it is hard to not feel guilt.”

Fareeha gave her as confident a smile as she could manage. “Then when we get Lena back, she’ll just have to help cheer you up.”

Amélie smiled weakly. “That would do a great deal to ease my mind.”

* * *

**(212) 264-3287**

Athena, this is Amélie. REALLY AMÉLIE.  
I am at Lena’s apartment. Winston should know where it is.  
I’m done speaking to the police. Can you come over?  
I don’t want to be alone right now.

 

_I need a little proof, please.  
What is my usual after hours?_

You don’t have one.

_Oh, thank gods._

_Are you OK?_

No.  
Not at all.

_We’ll be there as soon as we can._

* * *

Amélie had expected Athena and Winston to come over after Fareeha had left. She hadn’t expected Hana and Aleks to be with her.

“Sisterhood forever, girl,” Hana had explained after all of them – even _Aleks_ – had taken a turn giving her hugs and expressing their relief that she was safe, “besides, safety in numbers.”

Since Angela had decided to stay with Amélie for the time being, it was a bit crowded in Lena’s living room, but Amélie wasn’t complaining as she settled back on the couch, Athena sitting on one side and Hana the other, while Aleksandra leaned against a wall and Winston settled on the floor.

Amélie gave them an abridged explanation of what had happened to her – and how she had escaped – before finally being able to ask a few questions of her own. “How are things at the club? I heard about the attack from Angela and Fareeha.”

Winston gave a soft grunt. “We won’t be able to get a good look at things until tomorrow, probably, but ‘trashed’ is the easiest answer. The good news is that aside from the people who attacked the building, no one was seriously hurt.”

“The bar seemed to be in decent shape,” Athena observed, “so at least you won’t have to reset everything when you feel up to coming back to work.”

Amélie laughed darkly. “I’m pleased to hear that I still have a job.”

“Of course you do,” Winston assured her, “we take care of our own, Amélie.”

That got a round of nods – even from Angela – and despite it all, Amélie smiled just a little. “That… _merci beaucoup._ It means…it means a great deal, all of you.” She leaned back against the couch cushion, looking up at the ceiling. “Gérard thinks I hate who I am. That I am ashamed of being human. That’s not true at all. But I have realized that I want to be with the people who care about me. I am happy that I am _loved_. There is a difference.”

Aleks nodded. “Is good to be with friends, _solovyova._ To be cared about.” The bouncer smiled over to Hana, who grinned back. “So. What do we do about your little _strigoi_?”

Amélie shook her head. “I don’t even know if they took her to the same place I was kept…and I’m not even really sure where I _was_. I told Fareeha what I could before she went back to start working,”

“From what you’ve said and what we saw,” Athena observed, “they’re nasty but not always smart – like putting you in a room with a fire escape. I’d bet that means she’s being kept in the same place – wherever that is.”

Amélie sank back into the couch, considering that. “I…perhaps. If that’s true…the irony is not lost on me. If I’d tried to look…”

“You’d have probably been locked back up,” Hana interjected, “don’t _do_ that, ok? You got yourself out. That’s _smart_. You went to the hospital, and you called the cops. Don’t beat yourself up for stuff you couldn’t have known.”

Amélie nodded, closing her eyes in thought as she tried to make herself remember. Had there been _anything_ else?

To her surprise, it was Angela who spoke next. “Didn’t you say something to Fareeha about the streets?”

Amélie sat up. “Yes…they weren’t paved. They were cobblestones – very uneven.”

“Sounds like the meatpacking district,” Winston said thoughtfully, “or maybe Tribeca.”

Hana snorted. “No way those douchebags could afford rent in Tribeca. There’s a few in DUMBO, too.  Can you get me a paper map?”

It took Amélie a few minutes of searching Lena’s modest bookshelves, but she eventually found an old road atlas, flipping to the New York City section before handing it over. Hana spread the pages out on the table and closed her eyes as she put her fingers over the pages, flipping back and forth between them. Her ears flattened against her head as she concentrated, the fox-woman’s braided tails swishing against her back as she leaned forward.

“…close…no…no…doesn’t feel…yeah.” Her finger stabbed at a spot on the map. “ _Yeah._ ” Her eyes opened and she looked up into Amélie’s eyes. “Here. I think they’re near here.”

Amélie frowned. “How do you know…?”

Hana grinned. “Finding things is kind of a talent. And it feels…it’s hard to explain but sometimes I just _know_. And this? This one I know. They’re somewhere on that block.”

Angela leaned in to look at where Hana was pointing. “Well…when this was printed, at least, there were several warehouses for the piers all through that area along Bridge Street.”

Athena frowned. “A lot of those were converted to apartments and lofts.”

Winston looked up from his phone. “Still a lot of ground to cover.”

“There are six of us,” Aleksandra noted, “more, if we call _detektiv_.”

“Fareeha would need a warrant,” Angela objected, “and she can’t use Hana’s intuition to get one.”

Athena smiled. “By now, she has to have gotten at least _some_ information from the ones they took into custody – even if it’s just the contents of their wallets. If a few happen to live in the area we want to search, then she’s canvassing the area for information, right?”

Angela blinked, then began to smile. “That…might work. I’ll text her.”

Amélie looked around the room, which was rapidly changing from a gathering of support to a council of war. “Are…are you all certain of this? You could all go home. Wait for the police. You’ve already _been_ in so much danger…”

Winston stood slowly, gesturing to the room. “I said it before – we take care of our own. Lena’s been my friend for almost fifteen years. I’m not waiting around when she could use our help.” He paused, then gave a little smile. “Besides – that includes you, too.”

Amélie felt tears welling in her eyes as the others nodded in agreement. “I…I don’t know what to say.”

Hana grinned. “How about ‘Let’s get going’?”

“ _Allons-y._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on the update, hope it was worth the wait! :D
> 
> We've also got [four new cast portraits from Marita to go with the update!](http://redcap3.tumblr.com/post/157820251122/new-candyfloss-art)


	16. World Coming Down

When Fareeha arrived at the address she’d been given for Amélie Lacroix’s apartment, there was a distinct buzz of activity that could be felt as she walked up to the door. Nodding to the uniformed officer stationed at the door, she stepped in to see the scene and was immediately hit with a whiff of spoiling food.

“That’s pleasant,” she groaned as she knelt to examine the source – several spilled takeout containers, a thoroughly melted pint of ice cream, a bag from Duane Reade, and a set of DVDs that were scattered around the floor, each one already tagged with a number and photographed.  Fareeha looked over to the nearest officer. “Anyone examine the bag contents yet?”

“Not yet,” the crime scene unit photographer answered, “but I’m done shooting it if you want to take a look.”  
  
“Mostly just looking for…ah, there it is.” Snapping on a latex glove over the leather gloves she normally wore, Fareeha reached out and carefully removed the receipt. It was from the Flatbush Avenue store, dated Friday at 10:52 pm.  Crackers, ice cream, stomach medicine. Everything you’d expect someone to get for their girlfriend who wasn’t feeling well. “That’s the closest twenty-four hour one to Bed-Stuy…” It was all adding up, and she didn’t like the picture at all.

“Based on the disturbance of bag items and the way the soup was spread across the floor,” the CSU tech noted, “it appears victim was carrying these items and was struck from behind. Approximate height of 5’ 5”. No signs of forced entry, but the bedroom and closets show some signs of being searched and disturbed. No obvious indications of theft, though. Jewelry was still in the box on the dresser, TV, a laptop, none of it disturbed.”

“Right.” Fareeha sighed. Her cases were absolutely linked – and Amélie was the common thread. “Bag and tag everything – have the uniforms canvass the neighbors too. Anyone who heard a disturbance or sounds of a struggle Friday night between eleven and midnight.”

The tech made a few notes then closed his notebook. “Will do. Anything else, Detective?”

“No, I think I’ve got what I need here for right now.” Grunting softly as she stood, Fareeha left the apartment and was on her way back downstairs when her phone buzzed.

* * *

**! Angela !**

_ 03:58 _

Hello, schatz.  
Are you done at Amélie’s apartment?

 

_Just about._

_Everything lines up with the information I’ve gotten from the L’Enfer employees and what Amélie could provide._

_Are you still at Lena’s?_

Yes, but we may be leaving soon.

By any chance did any of the men you arrested have IDs from the area around Bridge and Water streets in dumbo?

_…_

_What are you doing right now, Angela?_

 

Well, we were talking to Amelie about what happened.

 

_“We”_

 

Winston and Athena and two of the bar staff – Aleksandra and Hana – came over to stay with Amélie for a bit.

And apparently Hana knows a few things about that area, and when Amélie mentioned the uneven block streets she got a…well. She called it a ‘vibe’. She thinks the place Amélie was taken might be somewhere in that part of the borough.

 

_Angela._

_You are a doctor. Not a cop._

_Officially I should be telling ALL of you to be going back to Lena’s right now and STAYING there._

And unofficially?

 

_It might be good for me to follow up leads in that area._

_There’s a parking garage at Front and Washington. Meet me there._

* * *

Angela had pulled what normally would have been a month’s worth of blood for Lena out of the refrigerator before they’d left the apartment. Dividing them up as they waited for Fareeha, she handed a bag to Athena, who stuffed it into her purse, and Hana, who made it disappear into the front pocket of her hoodie.

“I’m keeping the other two,” the doctor explained, “just in case. We don’t know what kind of shape she’ll be in when we find her. Worst case, Athena, you or Aleks hold her down, then place the bag in her mouth and force her jaw closed on it – as soon as her fangs pierce the bag and she drinks from it, she should start to recover.”

Aleksandra frowned thoughtfully. “And if she has lost her control?”

“From what she has told me,” Amélie answered, “sating her hunger will help Lena to recover herself quickly. It should not take long for her to recognize she is with friends.”

Fareeha joined them a few minutes later, having changed from the suit and long coat she’d been wearing to a more casual looking set of jeans and her motorcycling jacket. “Sorry I’m a little late. I thought it might be good if I didn’t immediately look like a cop right now.”

“Probably good,” Winston mused, “so what’s the plan, with some of us being a little more obvious than others?”

“Safety in numbers,” Fareeha replied instantly, “there’s a fair bit of ground to cover, but there’s only so many block streets in this area. Winston, Athena, and…” She frowned, trying to remember the names of the other two L’Enfer employees.

“Hana,” the fox-woman introduced herself, “and this is Aleks.”  
  
The detective nodded gratefully. “Right, sorry. The four of you stick together, and Angela and I can take Amélie and move around from the other direction.”

The sasquatch gave a deep ‘hmm’ of thought, then caught Athena’s eye and her nod of agreement before looking back to the policewoman. “What do we do if we find the building?”

“Athena has my phone number, from when Amélie texted her,” Angela suggested, “call me and we’ll make our way over as quickly as we can.”

“No text messages,” Fareeha ordered firmly, “phone calls only. If you get a text from any of us, assume something is wrong.”

That got a round of nods.

“It’s just shy of five in the morning,” Athena observed as she looked at her watch, “should we call in an hour regardless of what we’ve found?”

“Good idea,” Fareeha agreed, “any other questions?”

No one spoke up.

“Let’s go, then.”

* * *

It wasn’t too hard for Amélie, Angela, and Fareeha to look like two women who had been out all night getting led home by a somewhat soberer friend. The waves of adrenaline that had ebbed and flowed through the bartender were leaving her exhausted, to say nothing of the lingering ache in her arm and her body still recovering from whatever had been used to drug her.

She had no idea how Angela still seemed to have some energy after working a fourteen hour shift at the hospital and then diving into this emergency, but the doctor seemed to still have a bounce in her step as she wrapped her arm around Fareeha’s waist, occasionally giving a little bump or stumble that might or might not have been feigned.

“There’s a really good coffee place on Prospect,” Angela piped up as they walked, “they have _bircher_ there and it reminds me of home. When we are done we should go. I could eat a horse after today.”

“You say that,” Fareeha observed, “but the last few times we went out for brunch, you got the breakfast bowl, and then complained about not getting the granola thing later.”

“After today is done,” Angela promised, “I’ll have earned _both_. And maybe one of those cinnamon pastries.”

Fareeha rolled her eyes before looking over to Amélie. “Are you holding up all right? Does anything look familiar?”

“I’m _trying_ , but it was dark and I was still half…” Amélie trailed off as they came to an intersection, dark blocks leading back towards the river.

“Half…?” Angela turned to look as Amélie walked forward, taking a look towards a set of buildings and warehouses…including a converted warehouse advertising apartments, which had a fire escape that ended a few feet from the cross street. “Amélie?”

“I think…I think that is it.” Pointing to the building as subtly as she could, she waited for the other two women to look over and nod.

Fareeha sized the street up for a moment, then leaned in against Angela as if holding her up a bit more. “Give Amélie your phone. Amélie – we’re going to go take a quick look. While we do that, I want you to back up a street, call Athena, and have them meet you there.”

Amélie nodded, fading back and starting to dial as Fareeha and Angela took themselves up the block, the blonde letting out a loud, delighted laugh that turned to a yelp as she “accidentally” stumbled again in front of the warehouse, Fareeha kneeling to help her up with a long suffering sigh, taking a good look at the building as she clucked her tongue and helped the doctor back to her feet.

The doctor and the policewoman circled over another block before making their way back to where Amélie waited with the rest of their group.

Aleks, direct as ever, was the first to speak: “You found prison?”

Fareeha scowled as she nodded. “The ‘multi use building’ has someone guarding their loading dock with a pistol – wearing black fatigues. When this is over I’m going to have a very ‘interesting’ conversation with the landlord – and the owner of that café where Gérard attacked you, Amélie.”

“Not only that,” Angela observed, “they’ve got a gas tank on the back of the building that’s bigger than the one the hospital uses for our emergency generator! So they’re doing _something_ odd.”

Hana looked at both of the older women. “Soooo…do we wait for you to do cop stuff now? Or do we go in there and get Lena out?”

“As much as I want to call for a warrant and get a SWAT team in here…” Fareeha sighed. “Saint George just lost a lot of people – and by now their lawyers are probably getting phone calls from guys who are waking up after your DJ put them to sleep. Lena’s still a big unknown too – if she’s in there, for all we know they could pack her into the back of a van or a truck and be gone before the warrant got here – and the longer she’s getting hurt or starved of blood the greater the risk that she’d attack anyone I took in there too.”

The detective put a hand to her forehead. “I am going to be in _so much_ shit for this but I don’t know if we have time to do it a better way.”

Amélie reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, almost making the detective jump. “I understand the risks – and it means a great deal to me that you’re willing to take them.”

“So that just leaves the question of how we get in there,” Athena mused, “and what we do afterwards.”

“Actually…” Fareeha gave Amélie a thoughtful look. “I think I may have an idea, but you may not like it.”

* * *

Pearson yawned until it felt like his jaw was going to crack. He’d been covering the loading dock door since just before ten, when the group going to “send a message” had left to go burn down that freak club. They were supposed to be back a couple hours ago, but maybe they’d gotten tied up somehow. Nobody told him _anything_.

At least Alex was supposed to be relieving him at seven. He was looking forward to dinner and going upstairs to fall into a bed, especially after getting rained on for half his shift.

“Excuse me?”

The sound of a woman’s voice jerked the guard out of his internal bitch session, and he turned to where a woman with gorgeous coppery skin and short dark hair was approaching, wearing jeans and a white blouse that had been unbuttoned to show just a hint of her cleavage, her sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

“Hey, sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you!”

He noticed she had a faint accent – it was really cute, actually, and _damn_ did she look good in that outfit. Still, he had a job to do. Straightening up, he raised a hand. “Pardon me, ma’am but this is a private building.”

“Oh, no, no, that’s ok!” The woman stopped a few feet away (her eyes were _amazing_ ) and smiled at him, and Pearson felt like the sun had just come up. “My car broke down and my phone battery is dead. I was wondering if you had a cell phone?”

“Well…” Pearson’s throat was oddly dry, and he had to clear his throat a little, using the chance to stand himself up a little taller and suck in his gut a little. (Might as well look good, right?) “I’m not _really_ supposed to leave my station.”

His damsel in distress ( _man,_ more like goddess, look at those _arms_ ) stepped a little closer, reaching out to take his hand. “ _Please?_ I’d really appreciate it.” Her golden eyes met his, and Pearson felt desire hit him like a lightning bolt. “It’s just down the block…I’d be _very_ grateful.”

His voice had gone breathy, and he wasn’t able to tear himself away as he imagined just how grateful she might be. “Yeah?”

“Mmmhmmm,” she murmured, her velvety voice almost purring, “maybe you could help me get home and I could show you my… _appreciation_.”

Oh, yeah.

“OK,” Pearson grinned, “let’s go!”

“Thank you _so_ much,” the goddess sighed with divine relief, “come on, I’ll show you.”

He let her lead him away, not even giving a damn about his job or the orders he’d been given to watch the entrances at all times.

“So you’re a security guard, huh?”

He blinked, then nodded to the beautiful woman (oh my god, that _ass_ ) leading him away. “Yep. Sort of, anyway. I’m on guard duty tonight – I do a lot of security and I’ve helped with some of the cleanup work when they find a freak we can take on.”

“Oo,” the woman sighed, “that sounds tough. Are you a pretty tough guy…?”

“The toughest,” he boasted, “you would not _believe_ what we’ve got in there.”

“Oh yeah?” The goddess smirked at him, and Pearson hoped she didn’t live far at all, because he wanted to _bury_ himself in her. “Try me?”

“There’s an honest to god _vampire_ in there. Can you believe that?”

“Actually…” As they turned a corner, Pearson’s brows knit with confusion, because there wasn’t a car there, but the woman had come to a stop, turning to give him an odd little smile. “I might.”

Before Pearson could ask what that meant, something hard slammed into the back of his head like a baseball bat, and the guard was out before his body hit the pavement with a muffled _thud_.

Fareeha rolled her eyes as she began to turn her sleeves back down. “Not _that_ tough, after all.” Buttoning back up, she took her gloves from Athena with all the care of a woman handling raw plutonium, pulling them on before turning to the other corner. “Angela, can I have my jacket back?”

“Right here,” the doctor smiled to her lover, “nice work, my beautiful tempress. Why don’t you ever seduce _me_ like that?”

Fareeha shook her head as she shrugged the jacket on, then zipped it closed to her neck. “I _hate_ doing that – and seducing _you_ usually requires a very different technique. Like bringing you a fresh cup of coffee.”

Angela snorted as she knelt next to the unconscious guard. “I suppose you have me there.  But still – better than getting shot, wasn’t it?”

Fareeha sighed. “You have a point. Let’s get him off the street and get the boots, belt, and jacket off of him – he should be about Amélie’s size.”


	17. Babylon's Burning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild gore warning for the end of the chapter.

“Are you sure this will work?” Amélie shrugged a little as she tried to make the slightly-too-large black fatigue jacket settle a bit better. “They’ll know I’m not one of them.”

“It doesn’t have to last long,” Fareeha countered, “just long enough for you to get inside. Hana will open the loading dock door, and you head into the warehouse to get Lena.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Putting her ponytail into a bun at the back of her neck, Amélie set the featureless black baseball cap the guard had been wearing on her head, then buckled on his belt, the pistol feeling like a brick resting against her hip. “Hana, are you OK with this plan?”

“Uh…not _exactly_ ,” the _kumiho_ admitted, “but we don’t have a lot of time. Besides – it worked for Star Wars.”

“I’ll have my car around the corner,” Angela promised, “and worst case: we’ll run to it and get on the highway while one of us calls the police.”

“Right,” Hana nodded, “and with any luck they won’t even know what’s going on until we’re already out of there.”

They made their way back towards the building with Hana walking stiffly in front of Amélie, and the others trailing behind, eventually waiting just past the driveway that lead to the loading dock. Pulling Hana’s hands behind her back, she held them as if leading her in, then pulled the key card they’d taken from the guard to swipe through the reader, the light turning green as the door unlocked with a click.

“If anyone spots us,” Amélie murmured as they went inside of the warehouse space, “just raise a fuss like you’re my prisoner.”

“Right,” Hana whispered back, “I’ll make it look good.”

They moved past the loading dock door, and confirmed there was no keypad or lock on it – just a push button control for “OPEN” and “CLOSE.”

“Where _is_ everyone?” Hana looked around, her fox ears twitching. “I was expecting at least a few people moving around.”

Amélie frowned. “Perhaps most of them were at the club? Or sleeping – it _is_ late. Or early. I’m not sure which at this point.”

Hana considered that, then nodded. “Yeah, I suppose we shouldn’t complain too much.”

Moving back into the mostly empty space, it wasn’t hard to figure out where the “cell” that Saint George was holding Lena in must be – a large walled off area that might have been the foreman’s office back when the building had still been used as a warehouse.

Hana looked over her shoulder. “Think you can make it over there?”

Amélie nodded. “Those shelves along the side – I’ll try keeping close to them.”

“Gotcha,” Hana looked back to the loading dock’s rolling door. “Once I hit the button I’m guessing it’s going to aggro anyone else who _is_ awake. I’ll go back and give you a minute to get between the rows of shelves, then open it up and run.”

“Be careful,” Amélie urged, “once I’ve gotten Lena, we’ll head for that door on the far side.”

“I’ll let them know – I think Aleks is planning to tank the door and maybe Winston can meet you over there.”

Amélie tried to smile, but had a feeling it was more of a tired grimace. “ _D’accord_. Remember – _be careful_.”

“I will, I will,” Hana promised, took a step away, then turned back, her tails flicking against her leg. “Oh – wait, you’ll want this.” Reaching into her hoodie’s front pocket, she pulled out the unit of blood Angela had given her. “Just in case.”

“Good thinking.” Taking the blood, Amélie tried to find a pocket in the unfamiliar jacket that it would fit into, and finally settled on unzipping one of the long pockets on the side and putting the bag away as best as she could.

Tossing a quick salute, Hana began to move back towards the way they’d come in, while Amélie did her best to act like she was supposed to be there as she made her way to the shelves.

* * *

_It is weird_ , Hana thought to herself, _that nobody’s around._

She’d tried to put the thought out of her mind – there were a lot of reasons most of these creeps weren’t around – but at the same time Hana couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.

Despite her worries she was able make her way to the push button for the door without running into anyone else, only to get her bad vibe confirmed by the sound of voices near the entrance they’d used to come in.

“Pearson? _Pearson?_ Where’d you go?”

“Might be taking a shit.”

“You want to tell Lacroix or the Father that someone got in here – especially when we’re supposed to be watching for that French chick – because he couldn’t hold it for five minutes?”

Hana smirked from where she’d ducked behind a wooden crate. _I guess that’s my cue._

Dashing to the door, she slapped the “OPEN” button, and there was a loud groan as the motor cranked up, the metal slats of the door clattering as they rose and clapped together.

As soon as the door was high enough for her to get through she bolted, with a startled shout of _“HEY!”_ coming from where two more of the Saint George guys had been trying to figure out where their buddy went.

She’d nearly made it to the end of the driveway, planning to round the corner and jump into Angela’s car like they’d planned, when a hand grabbed the base of her tails and yanked on them sharply, making her scream as much from the unexpected contact as the pain, then tackled her roughly to the ground.

“I got her!”

The guard who had tackled her eased up enough to let her breathe, then grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around enough to get a look at her – and she could see both black-clad guards in turn.

“Huh,” the older looking one said with a look of surprise as they pulled her hood back to expose her ears, “she’s not who we were supposed to be watching out for, was she?”

The younger guard shook his head. “Nope. So – you get lost, little freak? Trying to break in and swipe something?”

Hana wrinkled her nose, her ears flattening against her head. “Yeah, right, like I’m all about racist- _chic_ and wannabe Carl Commandos.”

The older guard scowled. “Funny you should show up when we’ve had some trouble here tonight. You the one who helped Lacroix’s ex break out, maybe? Looking for your other little friend?”

Hana glared daggers at them, and the younger guard shrugged. “Have it your way – but you really don’t want to fuck with us, freak. We got a couple of guys who would _love_ those ears of yours for their trophy case. Tails, too.”

Hana shivered with fear, then relaxed as her ears picked up a faint but welcome sound, followed a moment later by a familiar musky scent.

“You think this is funny?” The younger guard grabbed fistfuls of her hoodie, pulling her up off the ground. “What’s making you smile you little shit?”

Hana smirked slightly as she met the younger guard’s eyes. “Bear cavalry.”

The two guards had just enough time to look at each other in utter confusion before Aleks plowed into them like a freight train, knocking Hana free.

Taking a deep breath, she shook herself a bit before getting up off the pavement, watching as Aleks bounced the one who had threatened to maim her off the pavement with just a little bit of satisfaction, then turned and ran for Angela’s car.

* * *

_There’s no time for us,_  
_There’s no place for us,_  
_What is this thing that builds our dreams,_  
_Yet slips away from us?_

_Who wants to live forever?_  
_Who wants to live forever?_  
_Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, oh!_

_There’s no chance for us,_  
_It’s all decided for us,_  
_This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us._

_Who wants to live forever?_  
_Who wants to live forever?_  
_Ohhhhhhhh, ohhhhh!_

_Who dares to love forever?_  
_Ohhhhh, ohhhh, when love must die!_

_But touch my tears with your lips._  
_Touch my world, with your fingertips._

_And we can have forever!_  
_And we can love forever!_  
_Forever is our today!_

_Who wants to live forever?_  
_Who wants to live forever?_  
_Forever is our today!_

_Who lives forever anyway?_

Lena sighed as she let the last note fade away. “Well, luv, you’re no Freddie Mercury…and I really should sing something a little less depressing next.”

She’d moved to the far back corner of the cell, about as far as she could get from the bag of blood that was increasingly hard for her to resist. At least the blood she’d splattered over the walls by the door had dried. She had enough temptations as it was, and the mental image of her licking the walls to salvage a few drops of what she’d thrown away made her stomach churn.

Her head dropped into her hands and she groaned with frustration. “What a bloody mess you are…fuck that was a pun, wasn’t it. _Shite._ ”

On the one hand, she was glad Amélie couldn’t see her like this. Half-starved, miserable, and quite possibly going out of her mind. On the other, god only knew what Gérard was doing to _her_ , and if they’d been together at least she would have had a somewhat safer option for feeding.

 _If you could stop yourself_ , the little voice in the back of her head taunted as a vision of Gabriel’s ashy face danced before her eyes, _just how much control do you think you have right now, Oxton?_

“I don’t know,” she whispered to herself, “but I’ve got enough to not take what’s in front of me. That’s…it’s good enough for now.”

_For now._

“Isn’t arguing with yourself a pretty good sign you’re a nutter?” Lena shook her head at herself and was about to try thinking of something better to sing when there was a scratching sound at the door, and a muffled grunt of frustration in a voice that…it couldn’t be, could it? Was she hearing things?

_“Lena?”_

Lena bolted up and crossed to the door, whispering urgently to the person she was praying was real on the other side. “Amé? God, please say that’s really you, luv!”

“It’s me,” the voice whispered back, and Lena almost fell over from sheer _relief_ , “hang on _ma chérie_ – I’m going to get you out but I have to find a key for the lock. The guard I…borrowed…these from doesn’t have the right one.”

“There’s an old grandpa looking chap called Pascal – don’t bother talking to him, just bash him on the head – I’d bet he has a key. Maybe another guard too.”

“I’ll try – we have to hurry before we’re…” Amélie’s voice trailed off, and Lena’s gut clenched at the voice she heard through the door.

“Caught?” Gérard’s voice was dripping with amused scorn. “ _Too late._ ”

* * *

“I knew you’d come running back to me eventually, _ma petite chou_.” Gérard gestured with the pistol he was holding. “Stand up.”

Amélie rose from where she’d been kneeling, trying to figure out if any of the keys on the ring they’d taken would work in the heavy deadbolt. Her stomach felt like lead and her mouth was full of ashes. They’d been _so close_.

“I’ve no idea how you got out,” Gérard gloated, “but I cannot believe you’d be so _stupid_ as to try to come back and get her. By now the club you worked at is a pile of cinders, and the police are probably _very_ interested in talking to the one employee who didn’t show up for a few days. Perhaps if you come with me, we can make sure that problem goes away.”

Amélie spat at her ex-husband’s feet. “The club is _fine_ , _putain de merde._ Your friends are mostly under arrest or in the hospital – and I think you’ll find that the police are looking for _you_.”

“Truly?” Gérard shook his head, the pistol still trained on her chest. “A setback. Nothing more – and we have plenty of friends in high places who will make sure the matter is swept under the rug. Now – the pistol you took. Drop it on the ground.”

Amélie slowly reached for the gun, fumbling a bit with the unfamiliar holster and weight, then dropped it to the floor before Gérard kicked it away.

“ _Let her go, you piece of shit!_ ” Lena’s voice was furious through the steel door.

“Oh,” Gérard purred, “I think not. My lovely wife and I have so much to catch up on, _ma chienne_.”

“ _I’ll fucking kill you – I swear!_ ”

Gérard looked towards the door with unveiled disgust. “I’d thought that a dog would be a nice addition to our family – especially a usefully trained one.” He shook his head as he put his hand over the unmarked red button Amélie had noticed earlier with the word “EMERGENCY” painted above it. “Perhaps I was wrong.”

* * *

Lena’s eyes widened as she realized what was about to happen. A surge of whatever passed for adrenaline in her these days ran through her veins, and she began to pull desperately at the door.

“ _No!_ You fucking _bastard!_ ” The door handle rattled as she put everything she had into pulling it open. She’d given away the game that she was out of her chains, but that didn’t matter at this point. She was more worried for Amélie than herself – if that son of a bitch had her _again_ , and because she was trying to free her…

She’d started to put one foot against the wooden framing and throw all her weight into the door when there came a loud coughing sound from above her, followed by a snap as the pilot lights caught – and then her entire world began to burn.

* * *

Amélie cried out in horror as Gérard slammed the button, rushing to the door and futilely trying to tug at the handle. A moment later there came a loud roar of moving air and heat so severe that she could feel it radiating from the door handle before Gérard roughly grabbed her by the shoulder from behind and pulled her away.

“A shame,” he said, voice dripping with false regret, “but I’m sure we can find another parasite eventually who will be more cooperative.”

She tried to stomp on his foot so she could break his grip, but his thick boots prevented her from doing any damage.

Trying to figure out if there was any way she could get leverage to break away from her ex-husband, she froze when she realized the cell door had just moved, the handle jumping as if someone was desperately trying to force it to turn.

“ _What?_ ” Gérard looked to the cell, his voice full of disbelief. “That… _impossible_ …”

The heavy steel door suddenly pulled inwards, the shriek of metal undercut with a furious, almost inhuman scream. The drywall around the door frame failed before the bolt did, half of the cell wall collapsing inwards before a figure from a nightmare strode out, the burnt and smoking remnants of her clothing crumbling to the floor as she moved.

Her hair scorched, her skin blackened and blistered, but visibly repairing itself like a gory time-lapse film, the vampire took a slow, deliberate step forward, her blood-red eyes burning with fury.

“ _You. Stupid. Shite._ ” Lena straightened, chest heaving, fangs bared in a snarl. “Vampires take a **lot** more killing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art was a gift from [Nox](For-General-Madness.tumblr.com) after beta reading this chapter. Thanks so much! :D


	18. Who Dares To Love Forever?

When Fareeha had watched Aleksandra charge in to rescue the Korean girl, she’d expected to see her change into a bear, as several of the witness reports from the attack on Club L’Enfer had indicated. Instead, the muscular woman had kept her human shape, but didn’t seem to have any problems with handling two armed men in body armor with nothing but her fists and feet.

The bouncer hadn’t killed either of the men who had attacked Hana, but neither of them were getting up any time soon. The younger one had a nasty looking crack on his head, while the older one who had threatened the fox-woman with a knife had an obviously broken arm and a leg twisted at an unnatural angle.

Once she’d made sure neither one was in immediate danger, she called into dispatch to get an ambulance sent out. She’d have to stretch the truth a bit about how she’d ended up in the area, but she could deal with that later.

She’d watched Angela pull away from the curb with Hana, then turned back to where Athena and Winston had joined the bouncer as they approached the warehouse’s loading dock, watching to see if anyone else would come to join this party.

“Any sign of Amélie or Lena?”

Winston frowned, shaking his head. “Not yet – but there hasn’t been anyone else, either. Do you really think we got them all?”

“I wish I could say yes,” Fareeha admitted, “but groups like this are like roaches. The rest will just burrow into the walls and find places to hide until they think it’s safe again.”

Before anyone could expand on that, the sound of a car entering the parking lot made them turn. Instead of the ambulance Fareeha had called, the car coming in was a dark colored sedan, with an older looking man at the wheel.

The car stopped abruptly and the driver got out, staring at the bound men on the ground before turning back to face them. “What is this? Who are you?”

Fareeha stepped forward, reaching into her pocket to produce her badge. “Detective Amari, NYPD. Do you live here, sir?”

“I am Pascal Talon – I am the owner of this building,” the older man huffed as his face went pale with surprise, then flushed red with anger, “what are you doing here? Why are the security guards I hired under arrest?”

“I was here to follow up leads on a kidnapping,” Fareeha answered, and watched the way Pascal’s eyes widened just slightly, “and these men attempted to assault me.” Not 100% true, but he didn’t need to know that. “Tell me, Mr. Talon, are you familiar with a man named Gérard Lacroix? Or a woman named Lena Oxton?”

Pascal’s jaw worked as his expression closed up. “I will not answer those questions – or any others – without a lawyer present.”  
  
“That can be arranged,” Fareeha assured him as she fished another set of plastic ties from her pocket, “for now, you’re under arrest as an accessory to kidnapping, assault, and making terroristic threats.” Grabbing his hands and cuffing him, she began to march him to where the other two Saint George guards awaited the ambulance. “Care to hear about your rights?”

Pascal muttered something vile at her in what sounded like French, but before she could begin mirandizing him, the sound of a gunshot from the warehouse seized her attention.

Fareeha released him and began to run for the loading dock, with the others from L’Enfer joining her a moment later after a second shot rang out.

* * *

Despite her defiant words, Lena felt barely able to stand. The effort of recovering from being so badly burned and her desperate efforts to break out of the cell had left her exhausted. The hunger screamed inside of her, and the gloating hunter’s heartbeat was like a siren’s song, dragging her closer as her instincts screamed for her to rip into him until she had everything she needed, and more.

Gérard smirked, the pistol in his hand jammed into Amé’s ribs. They both knew that if Lena tried to attack, he’d have more than enough time to pull the trigger. The thought that the abusive piece of shit was forcing his ex-wife to protect him made Lena see an entirely different kind of red. All she needed was _one_ opening, and she swore that French bastard would never lay a finger on any woman ever again.

“It’s a pity we didn’t have more time together, _Lena_.” The hunter’s eyes flashed with something between zealotry and madness. “I think we would have worked well together, _ma petite chienne_ , once you’d been properly tamed.”

“Bugger you,” Lena snarled, trying to stand a bit straighter despite her agony, “and bugger Saint George and all your fucking ‘dragonslayers’ too.”

“I’d never pollute myself,” Gérard assured her condescendingly, “but once you’d been properly weaned onto my blood? You’d have begged for it, I’m sure.” He began to slowly drag Amélie with him as they backed towards the door, her dark eyes livid. Faint noises of rage were muffled by the hand that had been clamped over her mouth, but Lena could guess at how her girlfriend felt about that idea.

“If my darling _wife_ had continued to prove difficult once she saw the true way of the world,” the hunter went on, “perhaps we’d have even have allowed you to finish corrupting her. If we banked enough of a reserve, I’m sure I would have been able to keep you both satisfied.” His possessive leer was truly disgusting. “With two vampires we could stoke into a frenzy and unleash? That we could use to sniff out the monsters trying to hide in plain sight? We’d have no trouble at all showing humanity what kind of dangers lurked among them. Finally convince them why we must always strike first!”

Lena’s voice was a cocktail of rage and disgust. “You’re sick, mate.” He had almost dragged Amé to the door, but it was a door that he’d have to _pull_ to open, not push. If she timed it right – if he gave her enough of an opening… “Absolutely bloody delusional.”

_Watch my eyes, Amélie. Please! Be ready!_

“Delusional? No. A visionary! Even if I fail today, tomorrow is another day, and there are many more who will help to defend Mankind at my side.” Gérard began to turn slightly so he could keep the gun in position, letting go of the taller woman’s mouth so he could open the door.

“I would never,” Amélie growled once she could speak clearly, “allow you to put a hand on her – or anyone else.” Her body tensed, and Lena could sense her heartrate rise. But instead of just trying to make a break for it, she turned, shoving the gun down before Gérard’s finger tightened on the trigger.

The gunshot was like a thunderclap, the report bouncing off the bare concrete floor and stark walls. The unexpected, almost deafening noise drowned out Amélie’s cry of pain as she was hit, and everything seemed to slow down to a crawl for Lena as her mind went into overdrive, fueled by a potent cocktail of rage, fear, and desperation.

Amélie collapsed with a bloody wound in her side, but Lena couldn’t hesitate. Even if it was in the worst possible way, her lover had created an opening, and their survival depended on Lena taking it. Putting all of the strength she had left into a furious, leaping charge, Lena slammed her shoulder into the larger man, wincing at the pain as she struck him with no padding whatsoever, but the force was enough to crack his head soundly against the heavy metal door, the gun dropping from his fingers and skittering across the floor.

If she’d been at something like full strength, Lena probably would have just snapped his neck and tucked into him for the blood she needed. She honestly didn’t feel much guilt at this point about the idea of killing a man who had admitted to wanting to enslave her and torture her lover. But she was anything but at full strength right now after the abuse she’d suffered and the injuries she’d been forced to heal.

She stunned the man for a moment, but Gérard recovered before she could sink her fangs into him. Pushing her back, he drove Lena down to the concrete floor, then delivered a punishing kick to her ribs with his steel-capped boot.

She felt the bone crack more than she heard it, and something soft inside of her shifted with an agonizing wrench of pain, the hunger intensifying as her body demanded the blood she needed to heal. Another painful kick forced Lena to draw herself into a fetal position to try to protect herself, and she barely could think beyond the _need_ that was now filling her.

“ _Pathétique_.” Gérard shook his head, his voice dripping with contempt. “You’re a parasite. Nothing without the strength you steal from us. No better than a tick, no matter what you look like.” He began to wind up for another blow when the sound of a pistol being cocked grabbed his attention.

“Don’t. Touch. Her.” Amélie’s voice was thick with pain and weariness as she rose to her knees, but she kept Gérard’s pistol steady as she aimed the weapon at his chest.

Gérard stared in disbelief. “You’d truly stand against me? Shoot me? For this creature? This  _THING?”_ His face darkened with rage as his voice rose, slipping back into French in his fury, stepping past Lena to advance towards her.  <<How _dare_ you, Amélie! I am your _husband!_ You are my **WIFE!** >>

“ _Non,_ ” Amélie’s voice was cold and hard as steel in the face of her abuser’s anger. “I am your _widow_.”

Her shot took him high in the chest, knocking him backwards, his eyes wide from surprise as much as from the pain of the wound. Stumbling, he fell back against Lena’s prone body, and all the vampire knew in that moment was the thready, desperate beating of his heart.

Her fangs sank deep into one of the superficial veins in the zealot’s leg, and she drank greedily until she felt the final beats before he became utterly still. The vampire grit her teeth and swallowed a cry of pain as she felt her broken ribs mending themselves, followed by the rush of her strength finally returning. Wiping a dark trail of blood from her mouth, Lena stood, chest heaving, then looked over to where Amélie had fallen back to the floor, blood pooling around her.

“Oh no. no no no _no no **NO!** ”_ Nearly teleporting to Amélie's side, Lena applied pressure to her lover’s wounded side to slow the blood loss. “Don’t you dare! I can’t…Amé, please…hang on!”

“Lena?” Amélie’s voice had a distinct haze to it, her skin even more pale than normal. “You’re alive…”

“Technically I’m not,” Lena tried to keep her voice light despite her fear, “but I’m not dead – or worse – thanks to you, my love. What the _fuck_ were you thinking trying to take his gun? You should have just gotten out of the way!”

“If he hadn’t shot me, he would have shot you.” Amélie’s heartbeat was increasing despite Lena’s attempts to staunch the bleeding. Shock was clearly setting in. “Is he…?”

“He will never hurt you, or me, or anyone else again. I swear to God he will not.” Where was Angela when she needed her? “But you need to hang on with me, OK? You’re hurt and I can’t…I’m trying to help luv but I’m stark naked in a warehouse here. Not really my best options! Was anyone else with you?”

“Angela was going…to take Hana…and get her out.” Amélie smiled sadly. “It seemed like the right idea at the time.”

 “I’m sure…dammit…please, come on Amé. Don’t suppose you have a phone? 911?”

“Gérard took it, when he kidnapped me… _fils de pute_.”

Lena felt tears filling her eyes. Wanted to swear, but knew it wasn’t what she needed to say right now. “I love you, Amélie. I love you so much. Don’t you dare leave me. I can’t pick you up with this wound, OK? I need you to hang on until we can get some help one way or another.”

“I’m sorry, _chérie_ …I’m not…I’m trying…” A shiver ran through the wounded woman that Lena could feel right up her arms. “ _Il fait froid_ …”

“No no no no, please, luv, please, stay with me! Come on! Keep looking at me!” The options were narrowing, and the last two choices were equally unthinkable to her. “Please! Just stay awake, I need you to stay awake, come on! HELP! FAREEHA? ANYONE?! ** _I NEED HELP!_** _”_

“ _Je t’aime_ …”

Lena winced inwardly at the ragged edge of panic that was slipping into her voice. “Amélie, I won’t…I can’t do this. Don’t do this! Please don’t make me lose you tonight! Not trying to _protec_ t me!”

“You…did so much…to protect _me_.” Amélie’s dreamy laugh had a bitter edge to it. “What else could I do?”

“Hah.” Lena laughed humorlessly. “Not funny. Unless you want me to do something really stupid, I need you to keep fighting! _Please!_ ”

“How stupid…is stupid?” Amélie looked up, trying to understand. “What else is there?”

Lena felt a tear run down her face. “The only way I can guarantee you get out of this is for me to give _you_ a drink. But I don’t…” Lena broke off, choking down a sob. “I know I make it look fun but do you know how lonely this is? How terrible this is, some days? Years? I do a great Benjamin Disraeli impression, but nobody gets the joke anymore. You’ve seen there’s plenty of downs, too…I don’t want to be…I don’t want to do that to you.”

Amélie’s smile was perfect and beautiful and heartbreaking, but her eyes had gone unfocused. “You wouldn’t… _be_ alone, _petitie idiote_.”

The tears were coming in full force now, and Lena didn’t bother to try stopping them. “You don’t know that for certain or forever, Amé. I love you but…nobody gets to know that.”

Tapping some last reserve of her strength, Amélie pulled herself up enough to offer a desperate kiss before falling back with a ragged gasp, Lena’s arms wrapping around to support her lover as her breathing became more rapid. “Lena…I can choose. I choose you. I choose this. _Please._ _Je veux t’aimer, pas mourir ici.”_

“Shh…ok…ok, luv.” Lena gently pulled Amélie up to her in a one armed hug. “I love you. I love you so much.” It was her choice. Amélie was absolutely correct about that, and Lena had no right to take it from her.

_She knows more about all of this going in than I did, really._

The vampire raised her free wrist to her mouth and forced her fangs out, biting down sharply until she’d opened a good vein. Tilting Amélie’s head back gently, Lena pressed the bleeding wound to her mouth. “I need you to drink, all right? Just hang on to me, and swallow as much as you can stand.”

Lena Oxton gave of her blood, and Amélie Lacroix drank deep.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this chapter by [Marita Broodley](http://three-legged-cow.tumblr.com).


	19. Song for the (un)Dying

Even though she was still fully clothed, Amélie shivered against Lena’s naked body as the vampire bled into her mouth. Lena’s blood was thick and viscous against her tongue, with a salty, metallic taste. She’d tasted her own blood on Lena’s lips before, but this was different. There was something acidic and sour to Lena’s blood, as if it had been mixed with something like vinegar. She wanted to gag, at first, but Lena’s gentle urging to drink was filling her ears, and she swallowed as much as she could.

After the third swallow, the dizziness that had been making her head swim began to ease. The cold that had been seeping into her bones began to ebb away, and the fatigue that she’d been fighting was gone.

The blood was still thick, coating her tongue and the roof of her mouth, but the taste was less caustic. Increasingly sweet, in fact, like a fortified port wine.

She felt an odd aching, stretching sensation from around the same area where she’d been shot, paired with a steadily increasing hunger, and a sound like someone slowly tapping on an empty box or can. Each tap came with a soft sound of moving liquid, and it took a moment for her to realize that it must be the beat of Lena’s heart, just as she’d once described being able to hear her own.

She took a breath, and suddenly realized that it no longer _hurt._

Amélie swallowed another mouthful of blood, but it did nothing to ease the hunger. If anything, it made her need _stronger_ , as if she’d tried to douse a fire with gasoline.

Lena drew her wrist back, and Amélie groaned with frustration as she watched the wound close.

“I know,” Lena murmured to her as she shifted around against her, “I know…your stomach isn’t really meant for this anymore.”  Lena’s irises were still red as she met her lover’s gaze, and Amélie realized she could notice several slightly different shades that she’d never been able to make out before. She wanted to look deeper into Lena’s eyes, to try to look for more details she’d been unable to observe, but with each breath she took there was a painful twisting sensation inside of her, making her cry out in pain as the gnawing hunger grew more intense with each passing moment.

“You need to feed properly. The first time isn’t fun at all,” Lena explained softly, “but after this it’ll be a bit like having your ears pierced. Channels that make it easier. But this time it _will_ hurt, ok?”

Amélie nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

“Just…think about wanting to feed. About satisfying that burning in you. Concentrate on it and think about being able to drink from me. About being able to get what you _need_.”

The hunger made it hard for her to think, but Amélie tried to focus on feeding, as Lena told her. Thought about how Lena’s fangs had looked when they extended. How they felt as they had pierced her skin. What the sensation of being fed from had been like. Thought of having her own fangs and sinking them into the side of Lena’s neck to taste that sweetness again…

There was pain, as Lena had said – a sharp stabbing sensation from the roof of her mouth and an odd feeling of things shifting and extending. She didn’t dwell on it. Instead, Amélie wrapped her arms around Lena, drawing her close, and sank her new fangs deep into her lover’s neck, some instinct drawing her to the vein.

Lena gasped with both pleasure and pain at the contact, and Amélie’s arms tightened as she sucked in Lena’s blood through her fangs for the first time, a wave of orgasmic pleasure washing over her as the hunger finally began to ease.

_No wonder this can become addictive_ , she thought, _but how do I know when it is enough?_

Her eyes slipped closed as Lena moaned beneath her lips, and Amélie joined with her own cry as she drew another blissful pull of Lena’s blood into herself.

* * *

Fareeha hadn’t been sure what to expect when they’d run into the warehouse, following the sound of the gunshots, but the tableaux that greeted her when she’d rounded a row of shelves to approach the foreman’s office wasn’t it.

A man’s body in black fatigues, eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. Surprisingly little blood, despite the obvious entry wound in his chest. Lena, naked and appearing to have been burned, judging by the angry pink and red patches on various parts of her body, and Amélie…

Amélie looked like a vision from a horror movie. The jacket they’d stolen from the guard had been discarded a few feet away, and a lurid bloodstain ran down one leg of her slacks.

Her formerly white shirt was absolutely soaked in blood – Fareeha could see what had looked like a gunshot wound in her side, but the skin beneath the hole in her shirt looked intact. Bloody handprints marked up her shoulders and the breast of her blouse, and her sleeves looked as if they’d been lying in a deep puddle of blood…like the one that appeared to be drying beside her.

Most shockingly, though, were the fangs that Amélie had sunk into Lena’s neck, and the thin trail of blood that had run from the wound and traced along the smaller woman’s shoulder and back.

Fareeha stared at the scene as the others caught up to her, and she heard Athena’s breath catch in shock.

“Oh my _Go_ _d,_ ” Winston murmured behind them, “what _happened?"_

Amélie’s eyes opened with a surprised gasp, and she lifted her head away to look up at them.

The bartender’s formerly deep brown irises had changed to a rich crimson color, and drying blood was smeared across her lips and cheeks.

Fareeha reached into her jacket and took out the unit of blood that Angela had given her. “Lena? Amélie? Is it safe for us to approach you, or should I toss this to you first?”

“I don’t…I don’t know,” Amélie admitted slowly with a faint edge of panic in her eyes, “I hear…I can _hear_ each of you. Feel your heartbeats…”

Lena opened her eyes, the wound on her neck closing, and reached up to stroke Amélie’s back with blood covered fingers. “Easy, luv. Easy. This is normal. It’s a lot right now but this is normal, ok? Just try to relax.” Turning as much as she could in her lover’s embrace, Lena looked over, her bearing one of what Fareeha normally would have called absolute exhaustion. “Fareeha…I could use that. I got a lot from that son of a bitch, but I had to give Amé most of it.”

Fareeha nodded slowly, then gently tossed the bag underhand, and Lena reached out to catch it in the air.

She drained about half the bag, the remaining burns beginning to heal before their eyes, then made herself pull away, handing the rest over to Amélie. “Here – you’ll need this. You’d lost a lot of blood before, and a bullet in your guts takes a lot to fix.”

Fareeha’s eyes narrowed as she considered the scene again. “Is that what happened?” She looked over to Amélie, who was hungrily draining the rest of the blood they’d provided. “You were shot?”

Amélie sagged with relief as she finished the blood, dropping the bag to the floor before she nodded. “Gérard,” she explained with a look of disgust at the black-clad corpse, “he had a gun. We struggled, and the gun went off.”

Fareeha took that on board. “We heard a second shot.”

Amélie looked down at the floor. “He was trying to kill Lena. He had dropped his gun after I was shot. I found it on the floor. I told him to get away from her. He…he started to come towards me, and I knew what I had to do.”

Fareeha was very much in cop mode now, and she wished she had her notepad. “Tried to kill Lena. How?”

“Had my cell rigged up like a bloody sci-fi movie. Put flamethrowers in the damned ceiling.” Lena gestured over towards the ruined cell, where the signs of a recent fire were still evident. “After that, mostly straight up beating the piss out of me. I was too weak to fight back after recovering as much as I could.”

“I don’t mean to sound rude,” Winston interrupted, “but can we discuss the elephant in the room?”

Lena gave a tired smile. “Yeah…well. Remember when you called Amé an ‘honorary cryptid’? You can drop the first part now.”

“We got that,” Fareeha responded coolly, “given the way she was drinking your blood and the fangs.”

“I was dying,” Amélie explained quietly, looking down at her bloodstained hands, “I asked her. She tried to help me hang on, but it wasn’t enough. So, I made a choice.” She looked back up to them, and her irises had changed again – no longer red, but now something closer to yellow gold. Lighter than Lena’s honey brown eyes, but a very similar shade. “I do not regret it.”

There was a howl of sirens from the direction of the loading dock, and Fareeha straightened up with a grunt. “That’s probably the ambulances and backup I called for after we handled the ones outside.” She looked thoughtfully at the two vampires. “I’m going to fill them in and get a couple of rescue blankets, then we’ll move you out to an ambulance to get checked out – at least as much as that’s possible. Do you need anything right now?”

Amélie looked embarrassed. “If the bag of blood Hana gave me is unbroken…it was in the jacket when I was shot.”

Fareeha shook her head. “I can’t touch it. This is a crime scene now, and disturbing your jacket would be tampering with evidence.”

Athena stepped up. “Here – I still have one.” Pulling it from her purse, she tossed it over. “We’ll be outside.” Giving Amélie a concerned look, she put a hand on Winston’s arm. “It’s probably better if we were never here.”

Fareeha sighed. “This is going to be a clusterfuck either way, but…yes. If you can go out the side door and not get noticed…”

“Right.” Winston looked over to Lena, “we’ll talk later, but your apartment is OK, Lena. We locked up before we helped Amélie get some clean clothes.”

Lena nodded gratefully. “Thanks, luv…be seeing you.”

* * *

After another hour or so, it was all over but the shouting. From what little Lena could tell, Fareeha had done a masterful job of tap-dancing around just why she’d been in the area beyond “following up leads on a possible inter-species kidnapping and the L’Enfer case” without telling them she’d basically been part of a vigilante rescue mission.

They’d removed Gérard’s body and a couple other dragonslayers, who had apparently had the piss beaten out of them, in ambulances, while another team of paramedics had provided her and Amélie with rescue blankets and carefully escorted them back to where another pair of emergency vehicles waited for them.

All things considered, Amé seemed to be handling things fairly well, though Lena expected that when the initial double-shock of the violent night and what had essentially been her death wore off, there would be more tears and a need for reassurance. She certainly wished that the one who had turned her would have provided a bit more TLC before turning her loose…and she had no intention of letting Amélie go. Not after what they’d been through.

Closing her eyes and leaning back on the hospital cart she’d been placed on, Lena pulled the rescue blanket a little tighter around herself tried to listen for her lover’s new heartbeat. Slower, even for her…but the beat of Amélie’s heart had become a bit stronger. She hadn’t expected that.

Of course, Amélie not being what she’d expected was a pretty good way to sum up their entire relationship.

Lena realized the heartbeat she’d been contemplating was growing closer, and opened her eyes as she sat up, one hand keeping the blanket wrapped around her body. “Hey, luv.”

Amélie looked exhausted – Lena wondered when either of them had slept last – but her eyes were bright as she settled down next to her, her own heavy blanket hiding her ruined clothes. “Hello, _ma chérie._ ”

Lena gestured towards where the paramedics were huddling for a discussion. “Clean bill of health?”

Amélie snorted softly. “So to speak. I feel much more in control of myself, once the hunger eased.” She looked at Lena with a new appreciation. “You told me it could become overwhelming, but until today I didn’t really understand – and yet you managed to stay focused even after all that Gérard did to you.”

Lena ducked her head bashfully. “Well. Had some experience, you know, and a pretty damn good reason to keep my head.”

Amélie nodded, then leaned in for a gentle kiss. “Still. You did all that – and saved me.” They curled together as best as they could as the sun began to rise over the bay. “I will never forget that, _ma petite idiote._ ”

Lena just wrapped her hand around Amélie’s and smiled. “So – after they take us to the hospital – fancy a nap back at my place?”

“I had actually planned to talk to you about moving into your building when my lease ended, before I was taken. Now…” Amélie squeezed her hand tightly. “Now I do not think I want to return to my flat unless it is to pack everything for the movers.”

Lena smiled. “Sounds good to me. Hell, if you want, I could chip in for a service to pack you up, too.”

Amélie took a moment to consider that, then nodded. “Perhaps. I… _we_ …made some good memories there…I should not throw them away with the bad.” She leaned in to kiss Lena on the top of her head, and Lena couldn’t help but melt a bit from the sheer relief of her presence – of both of them still being _here_ , after all that happened. “For today, though…being with you is more than enough.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”


	20. Every Day Is Halloween

“Look up towards the ceiling, please.”

Amélie did as Angela asked, then gave a soft ‘tch’ of discomfort as the doctor shined a pen light into her eyes.

“Is the light still uncomfortable?”

“It’s painful,” Amélie admitted, “after feeding, I can tolerate daylight, but a direct light is different.”

Angela nodded, then made a note on her chart. “Your pupillary reflex seems a bit slower than a normal human’s. That’s likely part of why. The response does occur, but your eyes still take in a great deal of light for a slightly longer period – which aggravates the increased rods and cones that appear to have developed in your eyes.”

Amélie considered that, then gave the doctor a nod. “Did you want to test anything else?”

“No,” Angela shook her head as she turned the lights back on, “I think that’s everything. Your motor reflexes are quite exceptional, and I’ll analyze the blood samples for the study before we plan to do anything else. Really, after looking at your medical history, the most interesting thing has been the way your mild bradycardia and orthostatic symptoms have corrected themselves – I can hardly recommend this as a _cure_ for patients suffering similar conditions, but there may be a few more things we can learn from how your body has repaired itself – I’m also curious to see if your joints remain hypermobile, or if they stabilize over time as well.”

Amélie chuckled softly. “So I suppose we should say you do not want to test anything else _today_ , then.”

Angela smiled. “Guilty as charged. But I will say that, aside from the fact that you’re technically six months post-mortem, you’re in excellent health.”

“A very minor detail,” Amélie observed dryly before they shared a laugh, “but thank you for all your help.”

“Of course,” Angela smiled, “it’s my pleasure – and the solution we worked out is far better than the two of you having to do anything drastic.”

After Amélie had been turned, she and Lena barely had time to consider the problem of acquiring enough blood for both of their needs when Angela had come to them with a solution. With the approval of the board at the hospital, Angela would begin providing a regular blood supply to each of them – without having to sneak around any longer – in exchange for their participation in the first detailed long-term medical studies ever performed on vampires.

 _The early lifecycle development of_ Homo Sapiens Haemovorus was well along at this point, and Angela had been gathering just as much data from Lena, with the intention of publishing another paper once she’d collected long term observations of both of their circulatory and digestive systems.

Their rapid healing was also of great interest, medically, but it was unlikely to produce any breakthrough treatments without converting the patient into another vampire, which was not likely to be an acceptable practice any time soon.

“Will I see both of you at the club tonight?”

“Of course,” Amélie concentrated for a moment so her fangs would extend and ‘enhance’ her smile, “it’s Halloween. Where else would we be?”

* * *

Lena looked at herself in the bathroom mirror and frowned as she tugged at her forelock. “I still can’t decide if I actually like this.”

The singed and burnt mess of her hair had been damaged enough that she’d decided to shave her head down to the scalp and slowly regrow it back beneath a wig until she could put it back into her old style. When she’d gone to have a new dye job done, though, her stylist had insisted that she ought to try something new instead of the usual pink. She’d considered a few options, and finally settled on what she had thought would be a shimmering silver, but the white base tended to come through more under most lighting.

“The silvery bits are nice, but more I look at it, the more I feel like I look a bit _old_.”

“Give it a chance, _chérie._ ” Amélie appeared behind her, halfway into the outfit she’d picked out for the evening. “I think it looks very good on you.” Leaning in, she lightly kissed the freshly shaven side of her lover’s head. “Besides, you _are_ more than two hundred years old.”

Lena stuck out her tongue at both their reflections. “I should never have let you get me that ‘unbirthday’ cake.”

Amélie smirked. “I thought you would appreciate me indulging your ridiculous sweet tooth.”

“The cake itself was fine. It was the candles that were a bit much.” Lena leaned back, letting her head rest against Amélie’s chest. “But I suppose it wasn’t all bad…”

“Mm. The party was quite fun. I think Athena has finally started to like you.”

Lena giggled. “And all I had to do was kill you!”

Amélie rolled her eyes. “We should get dressed.”

“Mmm…” Lena reached out to take Amélie’s hand, lightly kissing her wrist. “What if I thought we could have a bit of dinner first?” It had taken a bit of experimentation to figure out how they could make feeding a bit more entertaining than just biting down on the bagged units of blood Angela provided them, but the results had been well worth it.

“If you start _that_ , neither of us will be getting dressed. I will be late for work, and _you_ have a gig…” Amélie extracted her hand from Lena’s grip, but did pay for the privilege with a kiss, straightening up to toy a bit with Lena’s hair.

Lena gave a little groan as Amélie’s fingernails began to scrape against the edge of her undercut. “Mmmf. ’Strewth. You still up for singing during the second set?”

“I’m looking forward to it.” Amélie leaned in, and Lena shivered as lips teased over her helix piercings, “and perhaps we could…celebrate…afterwards.”

“When you put it that way,” Lena murmured, “I guess we really _should_ be on time…”

Amélie retreated to her room to finish dressing after one last kiss, and Lena stood to figure out her outfit for the evening.

They generally slept in the same bed, but giving Amélie the option to have her own space when she needed it had turned out to be the best fit after they’d moved in together. She’d spent too much time cultivating her independence to completely let go, and as Lena had pointed out when they first met, even vampires on the best of terms still tended to be somewhat territorial.

Lena had moved her stereo and vinyl into the living room and packed up her bass, amp, and everything else for practicing she’d kept in the former spare bedroom, renting a studio space in the neighborhood for when she wanted to practice…and one thing had led to another.

She’d just finished pulling on a pair of black cutoffs over the white and black striped tights she’d picked out for the night when there was a tap at her doorframe.

“I could use a bit of help, _chérie._ ”

“Right!” Lena buckled the belt as she turned around, her lips turning up in a grin. “Oo. That’s quite a look for you.”

Amélie had opted for black calf-length riding boots with dark crimson lined cuffs, black breeches chased with silver buckles, and a shimmering crimson vest over a white shirt. Her hair was held back by a silver tiara set with garnets, and a black and silver coat was on a hanger that she held in one hand.

“I’m very glad you approve.” Amélie’s golden eyes gleamed as she swept her gaze up and down, and her lips turned in a little smile. “As much as I do love you, _ma coeur,_ one of these days I _will_ make you dress the part properly.”

Lena grinned. “There’s nothing wrong with this, you know. Suits me way better than my old maid’s rags or fancy dress I never would have worn back then.” After all, the black t-shirt with a London phone booth and a small union jack at the shirttail was brand new, and she rather liked the spike-shouldered motorcycle jacket she’d bought after the police had let her know there was no sign of the one she’d been wearing when she was kidnapped. “That said…what did you need help with? Because you seem quite excellently put together.”

“This.” Raising her other hand, Amélie held up a silver choker necklace that had two brilliant red teardrop shaped gems hanging from one side – just as if she’d been bitten and her blood had been frozen into glass. “I was saving it…for a special night.”

“ _Oh_.” Lena blinked in surprise, then nodded. “Well. Here – come and sit on the bed, then, so I can do this properly.” She waited until her lover had seated herself, then took the necklace as Amélie drew her hair out of the way. “That is gorgeous,” Lena purred as her fingers traced the side of her graceful neck, “and the necklace is beautiful, too.”

Amélie hummed happily, and Lena leaned in to kiss the side of her neck gently before she slipped the choker into place, carefully closing the clasp after she’d made sure the necklace was properly positioned and arranged.

“You’ve no idea how tempted I am to give you a little nip just to make it completely authentic.”

Amélie smirked as she turned to look at her. “I have some idea…but we _will_ be late if I indulge you.”  

Lena grinned. “Afraid I won’t control myself?”

“Who says I am worried about _you_ losing control?”

As it worked out, they were _not_ late reaching Club L’Enfer, but Amélie was cutting it a bit close when she clocked in.

Athena had apparently decided to get into the spirit of the holiday by braiding her hair into several tightly wrapped plaits that twisted around her head before spilling down her shoulders, donning an elegantly draped white chiton dress, and hardening herself into her marble form.

Amélie couldn’t help but give her a skeptical glance as she worked to set up the bar for service. “Isn’t dressing yourself up as a statue a bit…obvious?”

“Says the woman who apparently dressed up as a vampire queen, _”_ Athena observed dryly, “I do like the necklace, though. Very elegant.”

Amélie gave a little nod, conceding the point. “I _did_ purchase the tiara just for tonight. Beyond that…I _am_ working, so it was best to be practical.”

“True enough. Do you have everything you need?”  
  
“Yes, thank you –  and will you be able to cover the bar during the second set?”  
  
“With all the people who have been asking when ‘The Nightingale’ would perform again? Of course I will.”

* * *

 

As Lena made her way into the backstage area that Winston had added into L’Enfer as part of the renovations he’d made to the club, she had barely cleared the stage door when she needed to duck to avoid a thrown drumstick. “Oi! Piss off, Jamie!”

The lanky drummer stuck out his tongue from where he sat on the throne for his drumset. “Fuck off, ya bloodsuckin’ cunt!” Drawing another set of sticks from the bag by his knee, he twisted his abnormally long fingers into a matched grip, ripping off a quick fill. “Were you ten minutes late to everything _before_ you carked it, or did you get that with the fangs?”

Lena rolled her eyes beneath her goggles, unslinging her gig bag and drawing out her Thunderbird. “Oh I was _not_.”

“That is true,” Satya observed from where she sat with her Les Paul across her lap, checking the tuning, “you were only _five_ minutes late.”

Lena sighed as she raised her hands in surrender. “Ok, ok, sorry…”

“I don’t really blame you,” their lead guitarist observed from where he was tapping a pick against his Strat, “if _I_ lived with your black widow, I’d be ten minutes late to everything, too.”

Lena rolled her eyes. “You’re just upset she turned you down flat, Shimada.”

Genji grinned. “Well, I didn’t know you two were dating at the time! I just saw such a beautiful gothic rose of pain behind the bar, and I had to dare her thorns.”

Their keyboardist snickered from where she’d been observing the byplay, flipping her long purple dip-dyed hair back over her shoulder. “And if your pickup lines were any worse, _baboso_ , you might have gotten to be the next person she shot. Now c’mon – _no mames_ , let’s get sound check done so we can _do this!_ ”

* * *

As one might expect from a goth themed club, Club L’Enfer was doing brisk business on Halloween night, particularly since the holiday allowed most their clientele to let their hair down, so to speak. Amélie had been so busy working the bar once the club opened its doors that she’d barely noticed the passage of time, and her first hint that they had passed nine p.m. had been cheers at the stage at the opposite end of the club, where a wiry Asian man with bright green spiked hair was strutting to the microphone that had been set up, guitar slung across his chest, while the rest of the band filled into their places. 

Where most might have introduced themselves or at least greeted the audience, Genji just smirked as everyone got into position, accepting the applause as his due, then pulled a pick from his pants pocket once everyone was ready to go, slamming down the opening bars of their first song while the rest of the band came in behind him.

_I’m a streetwalking cheetah with a heart full of napalm,_

_I’m a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb!_

_I am the world’s forgotten boy,_

_The one who searches and destroys!_

_  
Honey gotta help me please,_

_Somebody gotta save my soul,  
_

_Baby, detonate for me!_

_  
_ _Oh look out honey, ’cause I'm using technology._

_Ain’t got time to make no apology._

_S_ _oul radiation in the dead of night,_

_Love in the middle of a fire fight._   
  


_Honey, gotta strike me blind,_

_Somebody gotta save my soul,  
_

_Baby, penetrate my mind!  
_  

 _And I’m the world’s forgotten boy!_

_The one who’s searchin’, searchin’ to destroy._

_And honey I’m the world’s forgotten boy,_

_The one who’s searchin’, only to destroy, hey!_

 

Amélie took a moment to appreciate the way Lena looked as she thundered out the bass line for “Search and Destroy,” the white and silver of her hair fluorescing into bright blue and lavender shades under the club’s lighting, her goggles up on her forehead, revealing a beautiful mix of concentration and delight in her eyes as the band performed.

Her line of thought was interrupted by a customer stepping into her line of sight, tapping his knuckles against the bar.

“Hey. Can I get a bloody sunrise, heavy on the blood?”

His skin was dark, but with an odd undertone – almost like ash or burnt wood, and he wore a black bandanna with what looked like a white skull design picked out on it over his nose and mouth, calling her attention to his eyes – almost brown, but after a moment she realized that they were almost closer to the shade of drying blood. She’d been working to _not_ listen to every heartbeat around her – especially on a busy night in the club when it could overwhelm her – but when she did her best to focus on him, it was a rapid tempo, nearly a constant buzzing, and far too fast to be human.

_Interesting._

“Of course,” she replied with a raised eyebrow, “would you prefer the regular recipe or our specialty menu?”

She had the distinct impression he was smirking under the bandana. “Specialty.”

Nodding, she quickly mixed tequila, blood orange liquor, and orange juice over ice in a highball glass, then opened a small fridge behind the bar and removed a squeeze bottle filled with Type A-, adding three dashes in place of the usual grenadine, then finished the drink with a twist of orange peel.

“That will be $15, please.”

The customer traded a twenty for the drink. “Keep the change.”

“ _Merci._ ”

Pulling down the bandana so he could take a sip, she noticed a hint of dirty looking jagged teeth as he watched the band play for a minute.  “So what’s the band called?”

Amélie couldn’t resist a little smile. “Filthy Parasites.”

He snorted. “That _had_ to have been Oxton’s idea.”

Amélie’s head tilted as an alarm bell began to ring in the back of her mind. “You know Lena?”

The dark-skinned man chuckled. “Oh, yeah. From way back…” Turning back, he gave her a smile that looked more like a shark’s grin than a human, his wickedly sharp, jagged teeth framed by a dark goatee that was just beginning to be touched with grey. “Nice job on the drink, by the way.”

She nodded her head in appreciation, but before she could ask more questions, she noticed Hana coming in with an order. “If you’ll excuse me…” 

Tugging up his bandana again, he raised his free hand in a little wave. “No worries.”

* * *

Lena grinned fiercely back at Fawkes and Sombra as they finished “Double Barrel Prayer,” then got ready to shift over to the mic to take over lead vocals for the last song of their first set, playing out a little extra cable from her amp.  
  
“Going great, luvs! Everyone good for the last one?”

There were nods all around as she adjusted the mic down for her height, then she turned to fully face outward and gave the crowd on the club floor a cheesy wave. 

“Hiya! We’re gonna be taking a break after this next one, but don’t worry! We’re all in tonight, and we’re here to keep you rocking until they chuck us all out!”

That got an appreciative cheer, and she waited for it to die down before giving Jamie a quick nod. The bogeyman wound up and delivered a staccato beat to bring them in, and as Genji and Satya opened up with their parts, Lena began to belt out the lyrics.

 

_That girl thinks she’s the queen of the neighborhood!_

_She’s got the hottest trike in town!_

_That girl she holds her head up so high,_

_I think I want to be her best friend, yeah._

_Rebel girl! Rebel girl!_

_Rebel girl you are the queen of my world!_

_Rebel girl! Rebel girl!_

_I think I want to take you home,_

_I want to try on your clothes…_

_When she talks, I hear the revolution._

_In her hips, there’s revolutions._

_When she walks, the revolution’s coming..._

_In her kiss, I taste the revolution!_

 

Absorbed in the tasks of both singing and keeping her bass line going, Lena didn’t have much time to pay much attention to the crowd, but she stole a quick glance over at the bar to offer Amé a wink as she sang the chorus, hoping she caught it.

As she swept her eyes back over the floor, though, she caught a feeling of something that nearly made her falter the next verse, though she caught herself and kept her hands in time almost on autopilot. She could have _sworn_ she’d caught a glimpse of someone else in the crowd…someone very familiar, in fact. But that _couldn’t_ be possible… 

Pushing it out of her mind, she focused on getting the job done and finishing the song – she’d make a point of popping down to the bar before bringing Amélie back up for their next set. Maybe she could figure out what was going on a little closer to the floor.

 

_That girl thinks she’s the queen of the neighborhood,_

_I got news for you, she is!_

 

_They say she’s a dyke but I know,_

_She is my best friend yeah!_

_Rebel girl! Rebel girl!_

_Rebel girl you are the queen of my world!_

_Rebel girl! rebel girl!_

_I know I want to take you home,_

_I want to try on your clothes…_

_Love you like a sister, always,_

_Soul sister, blood sister._

_Come and be my best friend, really._

_Rebel girl,_

_I really like you, I really want to be your best friend!_

 

_Be my rebel girl…_

 

As the applause for the last song of the set began and the stage lights dimmed, Lena unslung her guitar and set it onto a stand that their roadie had dropped off the moment the lights started to go down.

“Thanks, Mako!”

The heavyset man grunted in acknowledgement as he dropped stands off for Satya and Genji, and Lena let him get on with his work.

“I’m popping down to the bar to pick Amé up for the next set – anyone need water or anything?”

Genji’s eyes danced with mischief, but before he could say anything Satya had clapped a hand over his mouth. “I will take a water – please ask Amélie to add a shot of simple syrup to the bottle. Genji would likely appreciate a bottle as well.”

Lena grinned. “Sugar doctored water, regular water – Jamie? Sombra?”

The keyboard player shrugged, flipping her asymmetrical haircut over her shoulder. “I’m OK. I snuck some Gatorade back here before we started.”

Jamison nodded agreement. “Aces here. Gonna just take a breather, maybe pop out for a smoko.”

Sombra snorted. “Try not to light your hair on fire. Again.”

“That made perfect sense at the time,” Jamison objected, “and looked _fuckin’ awesome_.”

Lena just laughed and shook her head as she navigated backstage and then down to the club floor, occasionally bumping knuckles with a few partygoers before she popped reached the bar where Amé was just trading places with Athena.

“Hey, gorgeous! Did you like the first set?”

Amélie nodded with a little smile. “When I had the chance to pay attention, yes – it’s been busy.”

“I can bet. Damn near a packed house here. Did I see Angie out there?”

“Mm. The wings are rather distinctive – and I believe she convinced Fareeha to put on a costume.”

“Really?” Lena looked into the crowd but couldn’t catch sight of them. “That’s brilliant – what did she pick out?”

Amélie cocked her head slightly. “Anubis, I think? One of the Egyptian gods with an animal head. She was wearing a bodysuit and gloves, but you could see her jaw from under the muzzle.”

“Aww. That sounds really cute. I hope I get to see her in it before all’s said and done.” Before she could forget again, Lena waved towards the bar. “Mind taking a few things back for the lads? Satya and Genji both wanted some water before we go for the next set.”

Amélie passed the order to Athena, then stiffened slightly as she turned back around. “Lena…I think someone wants to talk to you.”

“Wot…?” Lena turned and stiffened as she recognized the figure behind her. He was dressed differently than the last time she’d seen him, and the bandanna was an interesting touch, but those eyes…she’d have known Gabriel Reyes regardless of what he was wearing from the moment she saw those eyes.

“He said he was a friend of yours,” Amélie murmured, “when he came to the bar during the first set.”

“Something like that,” Lena agreed with a guarded look, “what the fuck are you doing in New York, Gabe?”

Gabriel raised his hands. “Would you believe I wanted to come see you?”

Lena frowned. “The last time you ‘saw’ me, you tried to light my pretty arse on fire with a magnesium flare because I’d ‘gotten in the way’ too often.”

She could practically feel Amé bristle behind her, the subtle sound of her heartbeat becoming noticeably louder.

Gabriel winced, and slowly pulled down the bandanna. “Yeah, I’m…would it help if I explained I’m partly here to apologize for that?”

Lena was about to reply to that when another figure joined him, dressed in a Revolutionary War Continental Army officer’s uniform, though he’d skipped the powdered wig and hat.

“Actually,” Jack Morrison admitted, “we _both_ came to apologize.”

Lena felt like she could be knocked over with a feather. “Ah…oh…kay…” She looked from one man to the other, pulling her goggles up and blinking to make absolutely sure she wasn’t hallucinating. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but why are you two not trying to kill each other?”

“Couples’ therapy,” Gabriel deadpanned, “is amazing.”

Lena couldn’t hold back a snort of laughter. “That… _seriously?!_ ”

“Seriously,” Jack nodded, “among a few other things.”

“I will be damned.”

“Probably,” Amélie observed dryly from behind her.

Lena looked back over her shoulder. “That is _so_ rude.”

Amélie smirked. “So is not introducing us, _ma idiote._ ”

“Fuck, right, sorry!” Lena looked back and gestured to each man in turn. “Amé, this is Gabriel Reyes, and that’s Jack Morrison. They would be the Jack and Gabe I told you about a long time back. Gents, this is my girlfriend, Amélie Lacroix.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Something tells me that ‘girlfriend’ doesn’t quite cover it…” His gaze shifted so he was looking Amélie in the eye directly. “How long?”

“Six months,” Amélie answered, “more or less.”

“Huh. Bet there’s a story there.”

“Oh god,” Lena sighed, “you’ve _no_ idea, but…” She gestured up to the stage. “We’ve both got to get back up there. Are you sticking around for a bit?”

“We’ll be here,” Gabriel offered them a closed lipped smile this time, “go have some fun.” 

Lena grabbed the water bottles Athena had put up on the bar for her, Satya’s marked with an “S” on the side of the label. “Right. Don’t go anywhere, then, we’ll be back!”

* * *

“They seem much less homicidal than you described them,” Amélie observed as they walked back to the stage.”

“Seriously.” Lena shook her head in disbelief. “Fucking _mental_ they’re even here, much less actually acting half decently. I really want to hear that story once we’re done.”

“We were starting to wonder if you two got _lost_ ,” Genji quipped as they found the rest of the band waiting for them offstage, “did you forget where to go?”

“Lena ran into some…unexpected friends at the bar,” Amélie explained, “and they needed a few minutes to catch up.”

“Oh.” Genji blinked, then rubbed the back of his head with one hand, accepting his water with the other. “I was going to tease you, but that’s actually pretty sweet.” Quickly draining about half of his bottle, he gave a loud ‘Ah!’ of satisfaction while Satya drank hers at a much more sedate pace.

Sombra looked at the watch on her wrist. “Sooo, we ready to do this?”

“Absolutely,” Lena confirmed with a grin, “you still thinking of opening with the new cover we’ve been working on?”

Sombra nodded with a knowing little smile. “If you’re up for it, Amélie.”

She couldn’t help but smile back. “I cannot think of a better way to start.”

The band got back into their places, but Genji left the mic conspicuously open after he grabbed his guitar, standing just to the side of the stacked speakers.

As the lights came up to some scattered applause, Lena raised her hand, pick grasped between her fingers, and just as the crowd at the club quieted down, she began to hammer out an aggressive, driving bass beat that Sombra augmented with a bouncing, slightly ominous keyboard line.

Two bars in both Genji and Satya had joined with their guitars, and as Jamie began to thunder on the drums, Amélie stepped confidently out to the microphone, a pair of _pince-nez_ sunglasses protecting her from the stage lighting that glittered off the silver accents of her outfit. Hitting her mark as several who had recognized her from different karaoke night performances applauded and cheered for her, Amélie smiled fiercely out at the crowd before she began to sing.

 

_Well I live with snakes and lizards,_

_And other things that go bump in the night._

_’Cause to me everyday is Halloween!_

_I have given up hiding and started to fight!_

_I have started to fight!_

_Well any time, any place, anywhere that I go:_

_All the people seem to stop and stare_

_They say “why are you dressed like it’s Halloween?_

_You look so absurd, you look so obscene!”_

_Oh, why can’t I live a life for me?_

_Why should I take the abuse that’s served?_

 

_Why can’t they see they’re just like me?_

_It’s the same, it’s the same in the whole wide world!_

 

_Well I let their teeny minds think,_

_That they’re dealing with someone who is over the brink._

 

_And I dress this way just to keep them at bay:_

_'Cause Halloween is everyday!  
_  

_It’s everyday…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. 
> 
> What a strange six month journey this has been. Especially since it all started with "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if I wrote something where Lena's the vampire and Amélie was the human with no clue?" 
> 
> I owe a ton of thanks to W, Noir, Nox, Mira, and Buttons for editing, beta reading, and being sounding boards. 
> 
> Thanks to Marita for her amazing artwork for the [cast portraits](http://redcap3.tumblr.com/post/159208514537/candyfloss-lace-cast-portraits) and her talent for taking my halfassed descriptions and bringing beautiful things to life. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone on the Overwatch Writers' Guild, WidowTracer, and MercyMaker discords for putting up with me in general, and thanks to every single one of you who have read, commented, left kudos, reblogged, or otherwise just kept coming back to see what happened next.
> 
> For those wondering if we'll be back...don't worry.
> 
> Death was just the beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> Most of the species I'm using for this fic either come from the appropriate culture's mythology, or are being yanked out of Seanan McGuire's Incryptid Series [field guide.](http://seananmcguire.com/fieldguide.php)
> 
> Current plans are for this fic to update every Tuesday. We'll see how that actually goes!


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